SGU Episode 1019: Difference between revisions

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'''Voice-over:''' You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
'''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 Wednesday, January 15th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody. Cara, Santa Maria.
'''S:''' Hello and welcome to the {{SGU|link=y}}. Today is Wednesday, January 15<sup>th</sup>, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...
 
'''B:''' Hey, everybody!
 
'''S:''' Cara Santa Maria...  


'''C:''' Howdy.
'''C:''' Howdy.  


'''S:''' Jay Novella. Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein.
'''S:''' Jay Novella...
 
'''J:''' Hey guys.  
 
'''S:''' ...and Evan Bernstein.  


'''E:''' Good evening everyone.
'''E:''' Good evening everyone.
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'''E:''' Yeah, by comparison to to many others.
'''E:''' Yeah, by comparison to to many others.


'''C:''' By comparison to many others and also just by comparison to this same time last week, I guess we could say there's two ways to answer the question when people ask how are you? And actually, many people were sharing a meme from Broad City across social media that was like everyone in LA this week. And it's one of the main characters going I'm or like, how are you? But like she's holding up air quotes because the one way is I'm safe and I'm not, you know, and my house is didn't burn down. Like, so in that sense, yes, I'm OK psychologically, I don't know how OK people are right now. We were talking off air before we before we started recording. But the saying right now, and I think so far everybody I've talked to, there's truth to it. If you live in LA, everyone in LA knows somebody who lost everything. You know, it's, it's a communal tragedy. And I've been working with patients all week. I've been working, you know, with myself, with my supervisors and also friends, family members, all that. And you know, there's this sense that it's, it's kind of hard to articulate, but I used a metaphor of like, if you fall into the ocean and you're splashing and you feel like you're drowning, and then somebody throws a life preserver to you and you can look up and you can see the sturdiness of the boat that threw out the life preserver. So very often when we're dealing with our own stuff, and I work with cancer patients, so they're dealing with their stuff. Even amongst the most difficult personal tragedy, there's a firmament around you. There's a sense of security when you look around. But these past, you know, this past week, LA is not secure. And so it's like looking up and the boat itself is on fire. We're sinking, you know, And that's that's sort of the feeling that most people have. And I think one of the hardest realizations is when you turn on the news or you pick up your phone or you reach out to somebody who's not right here and you realize that life didn't stop. And this is always really tough in the grief process. You're going through something really difficult, and the world is still going, you know, And there's still the confirmation hearings, and there's still. And you're just like, Oh my God. Because you feel like everything's on pause.
'''C:''' By comparison to many others and also just by comparison to this same time last week, I guess we could say there's two ways to answer the question when people ask how are you? And actually, many people were sharing a meme from Broad City across social media that was like everyone in LA this week. And it's one of the main characters going I'm or like, how are you? But like she's holding up air quotes because the one way is I'm safe and I'm not and my house is didn't burn down. Like, so in that sense, yes, I'm OK psychologically, I don't know how OK people are right now. We were talking off air before we started recording. But the saying right now, and I think so far everybody I've talked to, there's truth to it. If you live in LA, everyone in LA knows somebody who lost everything. You know, it's a communal tragedy. And I've been working with patients all week. I've been working with myself, with my supervisors and also friends, family members, all that. And there's this sense that it's, it's kind of hard to articulate, but I used a metaphor of like, if you fall into the ocean and you're splashing and you feel like you're drowning, and then somebody throws a life preserver to you and you can look up and you can see the sturdiness of the boat that threw out the life preserver. So very often when we're dealing with our own stuff, and I work with cancer patients, so they're dealing with their stuff. Even amongst the most difficult personal tragedy, there's a firmament around you. There's a sense of security when you look around. But this past week, LA is not secure. And so it's like looking up and the boat itself is on fire. We're sinking and that's sort of the feeling that most people have. And I think one of the hardest realizations is when you turn on the news or you pick up your phone or you reach out to somebody who's not right here and you realize that life didn't stop. And this is always really tough in the grief process. You're going through something really difficult, and the world is still going and there's still the confirmation hearings, and there's still. And you're just like, oh my God. Because you feel like everything's on pause.


'''E:''' I feel that way when somebody close to me has passed away or died.
'''E:''' I feel that way when somebody close to me has passed away or died.


'''C:''' Yeah, You want everybody to go. Just stop for a minute. Just stop doing all the things. Don't you see? Somebody died, But you know, that's how life is. It's tough to be a provider against this background, especially a new one. So a lot of processing around that, you know, it's like Mr. Rogers, like look for the helpers. And then it's like, but who's helping the helpers? Like, I hope that our first responders are taking up all of the offers for pro bono therapy, are really leaning on their loved ones right now because it's a lot.
'''C:''' Yeah, You want everybody to go. Just stop for a minute. Just stop doing all the things. Don't you see? Somebody died, but that's how life is. It's tough to be a provider against this background, especially a new one. So a lot of processing around that it's like Mr. Rogers, like look for the helpers. And then it's like, but who's helping the helpers? Like, I hope that our first responders are taking up all of the offers for pro bono therapy, are really leaning on their loved ones right now because it's a lot.


'''S:''' Well, we're going, we're going to talk in a little bit about some of the just the science surrounding what's happening with the yeah, with the fire.
'''S:''' Well, we're going to talk in a little bit about some of the just the science surrounding what's happening with the yeah, with the fire.


{{anchor|news_item}}
{{anchor|news_item}}
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'''S:''' But let's go on to some news items, Jay, Does fact checking social media work? Yeah, before I start guys, I'd be curious to hear what you think.
'''S:''' But let's go on to some news items, Jay, does fact checking social media work?


'''C:''' Zuck doesn't think so. Well. I think it probably does to some extent. I mean work is a loaded question.
'''J:''' Yeah, before I start guys, I'd be curious to hear what you think.
 
'''C:''' Zuck doesn't think so.
 
'''E:''' Well.
 
'''C:''' I think it probably does to some extent. I mean work is a loaded question.


'''E:''' Yeah, it seems kind of broad.
'''E:''' Yeah, it seems kind of broad.
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'''C:''' Does it work?
'''C:''' Does it work?


'''S:''' It does. This is what I think about it. If you just tell people this is fake, that doesn't work. If you keep if you actually suppress it in the algorithm or keep it from from either going online at all or being spread, that absolutely does work.
'''S:''' This is what I think about it. If you just tell people this is fake, that doesn't work. If you actually suppress it in the algorithm or keep it from from either going online at all or being spread, that absolutely does work.


'''C:''' Right, right. Like this is demonstrably untrue. So therefore it is against our policy to continue to show it as if it is true. Yeah.
'''C:''' Right, right. Like this is demonstrably untrue. So therefore it is against our policy to continue to show it as if it is true. Yeah.


'''J:''' Well, it turns out, you know, it's complicated, we have statistics, but in the end, you know, there, there is a definite, a definite positive influence. So let me get let me start at the beginning here because this this news item is inspired by Zuckerberg's change to Facebook's platform where Mehta announced that they have plans to scrap their third party fact checking program. It's been in place since 2016. And the program they paid independent groups to verify the accuracy of articles and posts on Facebook. And this plan moving forward is to use a Crowdsource system, right? They'll implement a model that's inspired by Twitter's community notes, which some of you might be aware of. The system allows users to contribute contacts and additional information to post on the platform. And the aim is to provide clarity or correct misinformation by those community people. So Meta says this change was made to address concerns about bias and censorship. Joel Kaplan, who is Meta's chief global affairs officer, said the following experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. So I think that his comment is straight up marketing BS.
'''J:''' Well, it turns out it's complicated, we have statistics, but in the end there is a definite positive influence. So let me start at the beginning here because this news item is inspired by Zuckerberg's change to Facebook's platform where Meta announced that they have plans to scrap their third party fact checking program. It's been in place since 2016. And the program they paid independent groups to verify the accuracy of articles and posts on Facebook. And this plan moving forward is to use a Crowdsource system, right? They'll implement a model that's inspired by Twitter's community notes, which some of you might be aware of. The system allows users to contribute contacts and additional information to post on the platform. And the aim is to provide clarity or correct misinformation by those community people. So Meta says this change was made to address concerns about bias and censorship. Joel Kaplan, who is Meta's chief global affairs officer, said the following, experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. So I think that his comment is straight up marketing BS.


'''C:''' And the experts, right?
'''C:''' Yeah, it sounds very loaded to me.


'''J:''' Totally. The experts he's referring to, these aren't regular people. They have a long, long, impressive list of credentials, and I'm going to name a few of them. This is what they typically have, you know, lots of variation, of course, but they hire people as professionals in the field, right? So they have an academic background in the relevant fields that, that they're observing and that they're that that they're editing. They commonly have critical thinking skills. They had they could, they could be journalists. They, they have a lot of credentials. Not, not these are not lightweight people that come in and say, Hey, look, I, I circled this in the you know, and they had in The Wanted ads like, no, these are people that have very strong legitimate credentials that qualify them. And you know, the word expert is not used loosely here. They are, they are content experts. They could do lots of different things, like they could be able to source the material that, you know, the comment all the way back to its source and then figure out how legitimate that source is or isn't. Look it up. You'll be interested to read the credentials that these people typically have. So Meta's new approach, like I said, is mirroring the community notes on Twitter. And I dare say that it didn't really work that well, especially, you know, Elon Musk's version, which, you know, this throws all of that out the window. So an obvious question is, does general fact checking actually work right now? Of course, the intent of the company has to be very firm and very good. They have to have good intentions because they they are the ultimate quality control of whatever fact checking is happening in general. To answer the question of does fact checking actually work like Steve says, Research research suggests it absolutely does. Studies done on the topic show similar conclusions that fact checking reduces beliefs about false claims. I know that's an easy sentence to say, but there's a lot behind that. And but you have to let that, let that fact ride as it is, because it is a very simple answer. Yes, fact checking works. Now, of course, we can discuss for hours on what degree that it works. And it's very hard to judge that just by the nature of what's being done here.
'''J:''' Right? Totally. The experts he's referring to, these aren't regular people. They have a long, long, impressive list of credentials, and I'm going to name a few of them. This is what they typically have lots of variation, of course, but they hire people as professionals in the field, right? So they have an academic background in the relevant fields that they're observing and that they're editing. They commonly have critical thinking skills. They could be journalists. They have a lot of credentials. These are not lightweight people that come in and say, hey, look, I circled this in the Wanted ads like, no, these are people that have very strong legitimate credentials that qualify them. And the word expert is not used loosely here. They are content experts. They could do lots of different things, like they could be able to source the material, the comment all the way back to its source and then figure out how legitimate that source is or isn't. Look it up. You'll be interested to read the credentials that these people typically have. So Meta's new approach, like I said, is mirroring the community notes on Twitter. And I dare say that it didn't really work that well, especially Elon Musk's version, which this throws all of that out the window. So an obvious question is, does general fact checking actually work? Of course, the intent of the company has to be very firm and very good. They have to have good intentions because they they are the ultimate quality control of whatever fact checking is happening. In general to answer the question of does fact checking actually work like Steve says, research suggests it absolutely does. Studies done on the topic show similar conclusions that fact checking reduces beliefs about false claims. I know that's an easy sentence to say, but there's a lot behind that. And but you have to let that fact ride as it is, because it is a very simple answer. Yes, fact checking works. Now, of course, we can discuss for hours on what degree that it works. And it's very hard to judge that just by the nature of what's being done here.


'''C:''' Jay, I mean, fact checking has been the backbone of legitimate journalism for all of journalism. Right.
'''C:''' Jay, I mean, fact checking has been the backbone of legitimate journalism for all of journalism.


'''J:''' I mean, it is absolute. It's a, it's a, it's a cornerstone of journalism.
'''J:''' Right. I mean, it is absolute. It's a, it's a, it's a cornerstone of journalism.


'''C:''' And and journalists don't share things that don't pass muster under fact checking. So by definition it is. It's at least a, what would you call it, threshold. A minimum standard.
'''C:''' And journalists don't share things that don't pass muster under fact checking. So by definition it is. It's at least a, what would you call it, threshold. A minimum standard.


'''J:''' Right, I totally agree, absolutely agree. And you know, of course, if you had total control over the information and with the intent on helping humanity, then that false information would be very short lived on social media and wouldn't get to as many eyes as, you know these pieces of information typically do. But let me give you guys a for instance, a 2019 meta analysis of studies involving more than 20,000 participants. They found that fact checking had a clear positive effect on people's political beliefs, helping them to actually better differentiate between truth and falsehood. That's great. And that says it all right there. The ideal scenario is to prevent the misinformation from spreading in the 1st place. You want to absolutely limit its exposure to the masses. You want to you want to contain it as quickly as possible. But when people are already exposed, fact checking actually can still reduce its impact, of course, because they're either they're removing it or they're putting up flags that say, you know, this, this information can't be verified. It doesn't have a clear source. That type of thing actually does have an impact. Now, why does fact checking still matter? Well, fact checking might not always change minds directly, but it does play a big role in the shaping of the online information ecosystem. If you think about, you know, all the information that's out there online and how that information revolves around groups of people, like minded people, people different political beliefs, people that have, you know, core beliefs that are that are different. You know, the information that surrounds skeptics is very different than the information that surrounds, you know, health and fitness people. But one thing about misinformation is that it kind of brushes over all of those groups and subgroups and it does get to everybody, right? Because it can exist in any, in any category that's out there. I think it's really important to say that without the fact checking, what we're going to see is we're going to see the, the proliferation of misinformation and then there's going to be a, a battle that's going to be, it's going to create battlefields very similar to what we see on Wikipedia, right? Wikipedia has approved Wikipedia editors and, you know, they could do things like creating new pages, which is, you know, absolutely important because as, as things happen, we have to, you know, we want to see posts that are, that are, you know, gathering all the information. Like you can go and look up the the LA fires and there'll be a post on Wikipedia about that, that that gives up to date information on it. Now that the knife cuts both ways. Because, you know, in an ideal Wikipedia situation, we have people that, you know, are unbiased and have the skill sets to to do this. And they're going to do the best job that they can. And they're going to vet the information. They're going to do all the steps that we skeptics have learned how to, how to vet information. But you have people that become editors that you don't have other intentions, right? And I've, I've talked to Wikipedia editors that say that they're in a tug of war where they'll go on, on one day and they'll, they'll add information, they'll shape it, they'll make it, you know, present reality. And then you have people that will come in that night or the next day or whatever, the next approval, whenever they, they can edit it again, because it's not like a moment to moment. Then what happens? They change it and they put back in the misinformation because they're having a tug of war over that. This is what we can expect to happen on meta when people are going to be going in who don't have the qualifications, who, who really, you know, shouldn't be editing information or doing anything to, you know, to provide direction to other people on what's true and what's not true. It's going to, it's going to be a train wreck. And I'm really, I'm really concerned because we already live in a world that has weaponized misinformation. It's rampant. You know, Meta's move is a horrible sign of the web sinking deeper into misinformation. Fact checking isn't a panacea, but it's one of the few tools proven to have a positive impact. And what we should be doing is leaning into it and figuring out ways to even make it more useful and more powerful. But that's not the world we live in.
'''J:''' Right, I totally agree, absolutely agree. And you know, of course, if you had total control over the information and with the intent on helping humanity, then that false information would be very short lived on social media and wouldn't get to as many eyes as these pieces of information typically do. But let me give you guys a for instance, a 2019 meta analysis of studies involving more than 20,000 participants. They found that fact checking had a clear positive effect on people's political beliefs, helping them to actually better differentiate between truth and falsehood. That's great. And that says it all right there. The ideal scenario is to prevent the misinformation from spreading in the 1st place. You want to absolutely limit its exposure to the masses. You want to contain it as quickly as possible. But when people are already exposed, fact checking actually can still reduce its impact, of course, because they're either they're removing it or they're putting up flags that say this information can't be verified. It doesn't have a clear source. That type of thing actually does have an impact. Now, why does fact checking still matter? Well, fact checking might not always change minds directly, but it does play a big role in the shaping of the online information ecosystem. If you think about all the information that's out there online and how that information revolves around groups of people, like minded people, people different political beliefs, people that have core beliefs that are different. The information that surrounds skeptics is very different than the information that surrounds health and fitness people. But one thing about misinformation is that it kind of brushes over all of those groups and subgroups and it does get to everybody, right? Because it can exist in any category that's out there. I think it's really important to say that without the fact checking, what we're going to see is we're going to see the proliferation of misinformation and then there's going to be a battle. It's going to create battlefields very similar to what we see on Wikipedia, right? Wikipedia has approved Wikipedia editors and they could do things like creating new pages, which is absolutely important because as things happen, we want to see posts that are gathering all the information. Like you can go and look up the the LA fires and there'll be a post on Wikipedia about that gives up to date information on it. Now the knife cuts both ways. Because in an ideal Wikipedia situation, we have people that are unbiased and have the skill sets to to do this. And they're going to do the best job that they can. And they're going to vet the information. They're going to do all the steps that we skeptics have learned how to vet information. But you have people that become editors that you have other intentions, right? And I've talked to Wikipedia editors that say that they're in a tug of war where they'll go on one day and they'll add information, they'll shape it, they'll make it present reality. And then you have people that will come in that night or the next day or whatever, the next approval, whenever they can edit it again, because it's not like a moment to moment. Then what happens? They change it and they put back in the misinformation because they're having a tug of war over that. This is what we can expect to happen on Meta when people are going to be going in who don't have the qualifications, who, who really shouldn't be editing information or doing anything to provide direction to other people on what's true and what's not true. It's going to be a train wreck. And I'm really concerned because we already live in a world that has weaponized misinformation. It's rampant. Meta's move is a horrible sign of the web sinking deeper into misinformation. Fact checking isn't a panacea, but it's one of the few tools proven to have a positive impact. And what we should be doing is leaning into it and figuring out ways to even make it more useful and more powerful. But that's not the world we live in.


'''C:''' But also, why are people getting their news from Facebook?
'''C:''' But also, why are people getting their news from Facebook?


'''S:''' Because that's that is ship has sailed. I mean, people are using social media as a convenient way to just get information about the world. And they may not even be looking for news so much as just looking for content, you know, but that's, this is what people are talking about today. They're talking about whatever is happening. And so it becomes the de facto source of news.
'''S:''' Because that ship has sailed. I mean, people are using social media as a convenient way to just get information about the world. And they may not even be looking for news so much as just looking for content but that's, this is what people are talking about today. They're talking about whatever is happening. And so it becomes the de facto source of news.


'''C:''' Do you think that this is going to do for Facebook what Elon taking over Twitter did? Like I'm not there. Most people I know aren't on Twitter anymore. And every time I do reopen the app, it's a cesspool. It's like, you know, an abandoned car that's overrun with rats. Like I'll look at posts and it's just it, it's, it's amazing the rhetoric that I see and just the spam and the bots and it, I don't know what happened to it, but do you think that's going to happen to Facebook?
'''C:''' Do you think that this is going to do for Facebook what Elon taking over Twitter did? Like I'm not there. Most people I know aren't on Twitter anymore. And every time I do reopen the app, it's a cesspool. It's like an abandoned car that's overrun with rats. Like I'll look at posts and it's just, it's amazing the rhetoric that I see and just the spam and the bots and I don't know what happened to it, but do you think that's going to happen to Facebook?


'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, I think it would sure that then that's the concern, right? It's that it's you're, you're opening the floodgates. I mean, this is a deeper conversation about social media. The fact that it so if you have like just completely unregulated social media platform where people can say whatever they want to say and there's, there's no fact checking or editorial filter or limit on hate speech or anything, then it becomes a playground for psychopaths. It becomes a tool for propaganda of every type. You know, the people who have the most time on their hands and the most obsession about topics are the ones who are going to be disproportionately represented. So it's not like, oh, it's going to be a free marketplace of ideas where the quality of the idea is the one factor that's going to allow things to rise to the cream, to rise to the top. That's not what's happening. That is, you know, demonstrably not what's happening. It's you have the obsessive extreme propaganda. You know, speech is what is propagated and it's drowning out all other types of speech. It's.
'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, I think it would, sure, that's the concern, right? It's that you're opening the floodgates. I mean, this is a deeper conversation about social media. If you have like just completely unregulated social media platform where people can say whatever they want to say and there's no fact checking or editorial filter or limit on hate speech or anything, then it becomes a playground for psychopaths. It becomes a tool for propaganda of every type. The people who have the most time on their hands and the most obsession about topics are the ones who are going to be disproportionately represented. So it's not like, oh, it's going to be a free marketplace of ideas where the quality of the idea is the one factor that's going to allow things to rise to the cream, to rise to the top. That's not what's happening. That is demonstrably not what's happening. It's you have the obsessive extreme propaganda speech is what is propagated and it's drowning out all other types of speech.


'''C:''' Not you can purchase speech. So people who have a monetary interest in changing political ideology or changing thoughts or, you know, changing purchasing power. You don't even know what's behind most of these posts. Like why are they posting it? Are they trying to swing an election? Are they trying to get you by something? Are they trying to, you know, whatever. Yeah, that's the other thing.
'''C:''' You can purchase speech. So people who have a monetary interest in changing political ideology or changing thoughts or changing purchasing power. You don't even know what's behind most of these posts. Like why are they posting it? Are they trying to swing an election? Are they trying to get you by something? Are they trying to whatever.


'''S:''' It's a, it's a great point. There's no transparency. So normally, like if you have a political ad, you have to say this ad is supported by this person, but you can have de facto political ads on social media with no disclosure of who's behind them at all. So like all of the rules that have evolved over the last century or whatever, in terms of, as you say, quality journalism, of fairness and reporting, of transparency in you know who, who is speaking or whatever, it's all gone.
'''S:''' Yeah, that's the other thing. It's a great point. There's no transparency. So normally, like if you have a political ad, you have to say this ad is supported by this person, but you can have de facto political ads on social media with no disclosure of who's behind them at all. So like all of the rules that have evolved over the last century or whatever, in terms of, as you say, quality journalism, of fairness and reporting, of transparency in who is speaking or whatever, it's all gone.


'''B:''' It is all Vista.
'''B:''' Hasta la vista.


'''S:''' Yeah, either we need to just run this psychological social experiment and see what happens, although I think that we have a pretty good, a pretty good idea. You know, I think what's good, what's happening, or we have to figure out how to transfer the same kind of social protections to this new media, you know?
'''S:''' Yeah, either we need to just run this psychological social experiment and see what happens, although I think that we have a pretty good idea, what's happening, or we have to figure out how to transfer the same kind of social protections to this new media, you know?


'''E:''' Warning labels.
'''E:''' Warning labels.


'''S:''' Well, I think that this warning labels don't really work you.
'''S:''' Well, I think that this warning labels don't really work.


'''E:''' Know and or honestly.
'''E:''' Well, I guess that's my point. What does work? What has been proven to work in these we'll.


'''C:''' Right.
'''B:''' We'll get right on it right after we fix global climate change.


'''E:''' Well, I guess that's my point. What does work? What has been proven to work in these we'll. Get right on and right after we fix global change climate.
'''C:''' Well, and I don't want to skip ahead to my news item, but I'm going to touch on an app that is an app that had an express intention that is run by individuals, actually team of people with a very specific mission that is not for sale, that does not scrub user data and is factual only. I mean, so much of that, so much of how you affect change in this situation is who is controlling the platform and what are their rules.


'''C:''' Change well, and I don't want to skip ahead to my news item, but I'm going to touch on an app that is an app that had an express intention that is run by individuals, actually team of people with a very specific mission that is not for sale, that does not scrub user data and is factual only. I mean, so much of that, so much of how you affect change in this situation is who is controlling the platform and what are their rules.
'''S:''' Yeah. So I think that's a good point, Cara, is that so one choice we have as consumers is which social media will be patronized, right? And so we need to pick social media apps that do have good quality and that do have rules of engagement, which promote at least have a minimum filter for the worst kind of propaganda, hate speech, straight up lies, all that stuff. So we may just have to just go off of platforms that are not doing that. And like we've moved a lot of us over to Bluesky just because it for now anyway, it seems to be a little bit better environment. But again-


'''S:''' Yeah. So I think that's a good point, Cara, is that so one choice we have as consumers is which social media will be patronized, right? And so we, we need to pick social media apps that do have good quality and that do have rules of engagement, which promote, you know, at least have a minimum filter for like the worst kind of propaganda, hate speech, straight up lies, all that stuff, right. So, and so, you know, we may just have to just go off of platforms that are not doing that. And like, you know, we, we've moved a lot of us over to, to blue sky, you know, just because it for now anyway, it seems to be a little bit better environment. But again it.
'''C:''' It feels like old Twitter a little.


'''C:''' Was like old Twitter a.
'''S:''' That's not a panacea either, because then that just contributes to for the further isolation of societies. Now we're going to have like, we have red states, blue states, we're going to have Twitter people and Bluesky people. We're going to be siloing ourselves into these subcultures of social media platforms. That's not good.


'''S:''' Little that's not a panacea either, because then that just contributes to for the further isolation of societies. Now we're going to have like, we have red states, blue states, we're going to have Twitter people and blue sky people, you know, like we're going to be siloing ourselves into these subcultures of social media platforms. That's not good.
'''C:''' But that's a larger geopolitical question, right? Like you think about the Civil War and you think about areas like in the United States where ultimately we stayed one nation where a lot of people, we made compromises that many people weren't happy with and a lot of people were disgruntled. And that continues to this day in our policy and in the way that we vote. And then you see other nations where they split or where people seceded and they said, you know what, we have irreconcilable differences and the people who think this way are going to live here and the people who think that way are going to live there. And I'm not saying either way is right, but that does play out time and time again. So is the answer always to say, let's not be siloed? Maybe. But does that create more conflict? Does it create less conflict? I don't know. It's a complicated question, especially when the ideologies are so diametrically opposed.


'''C:''' But that's a larger geopolitical question, right? Like you think about the Civil War and you think about areas like in the United States where ultimately we stayed one nation where a lot of people, we made compromises that many people weren't happy with and a lot of people were disgruntled. And that continues to this day in our policy and in our the way that we vote. And then you see other nations where they split or where people seceded and they said, you know what, we have irreconcilable differences and the people who think this way are going to live here and the people who think that way are going to live there. And I I'm not saying either way is right, but that does play out time and time again. So is the answer always to say, let's not be siloed? Maybe. But does that create more conflict? Does it create less conflict? I don't know. It's a complicated question, especially when the ideologies are so diametrically opposed.
'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, it's hard to, I guess, if in order for a forest to be green, all the trees must be green, right? It's hard to have a society that's open and where we have open conversation and good faith and everybody's reasonable, right? Can't have a reasonable society unless most of the people are reasonable, and we're not going to fix that with social media.


'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, it's, it's hard to, I guess, if in order for a forest to be green, all the trees must be green, right? It's hard to have a society that's open and where we have open conversation and good faith and everybody's reasonable, right? It have a reasonable society unless most of the people are reasonable, and we're not going to fix that with social media.
'''C:''' No, and there's a reason that after World War 2 Germany had very strict laws about what you could say and what you could do, because they said this is not in keeping with a fair and just society. We will not allow Nazi propaganda to flourish after the war. We have to tamp it down. So you're right, Steve. I think it's really complicated when I guess it depends on the goals, right? What are the goals of the people in the society and do they agree?


'''C:''' No, and there's a reason that after World War 2 Germany had very strict laws about what you could say and what you could do, because they said this is not in keeping with a fair and just society. We will not allow Nazi propaganda to flourish after the war. We have to tamp it down, you know, So you're right, Steve. I think it's really complicated when I guess it depends on the goals, right? What are the goals of the people in the society and do they agree?
'''S:''' Yeah, there's no perfect solution because at the end of the day either you're going to have a chaos, anarchy, free for all, or somebody is going to be imposing some kind of filter. And then of course, that who is that person? Who's that group? Who's that entity? What are their motivations, right? There's something to be said for free speech. Of course we we support free speech strongly, but free speech requires a venue where your voice can be heard and not overwhelmed by a bunch of psychopaths who are just trolling everybody or bots who are spreading propaganda.
 
'''S:''' Yeah, there's no perfect solution because at the end of the day, you know, either you're going to have a chaos, anarchy, free for all, or somebody is going to be imposing some kind of filter. And then of course, that who is that person? Who's that group? Who's that entity? What are their motivations, right? There's something to be said for free speech. Of course we we support free speech strongly, but but free speech requires a venue where your voice can be heard and not overwhelmed by a bunch of psychopaths, you know, who are just trolling everybody or bots who are spreading propaganda. You know what I mean? So.


'''C:''' And free speech only means that the government does not abridge it. You know, like really, when it comes down to it.
'''C:''' And free speech only means that the government does not abridge it. You know, like really, when it comes down to it.


'''S:''' That's the First Amendment, yes, we could distinguish free the concept of free speech and the 1st Amendment, the 1st Amendment.
'''S:''' That's the First Amendment, yes, we could distinguish free the concept of free speech and the 1st Amendment.


'''C:''' Is most Americans.
'''C:''' Which I think most Americans are-


'''S:''' They conflate the two often.
'''S:''' They conflate the two often.


'''C:''' Conflating the two.
'''C:''' Conflating the two, yes.


'''S:''' Yes, absolutely, but you know free speech doesn't mean again a free for all it it doesn't mean that like there isn't an editorial policy you.
'''S:''' Absolutely, but free speech doesn't mean again a free for all. It doesn't mean that like there isn't an editorial policy.


'''E:''' Can't defraud people.
'''E:''' You can't defraud people.


'''S:''' Yeah, right.
'''C:''' Yeah.


'''C:''' Yeah, you can't straight up lie about somebody. And like, yeah, there's a lot of limits to free.
'''S:''' Right.


'''E:''' Fame, yeah.
'''C:''' Yeah, you can't straight up lie about somebody. And like, yeah, there's a lot of limits to free speech.


'''S:''' It doesn't mean you can't Fact Check. Fact checking doesn't mean you don't have free speech. It means is there somebody who's going to look it up and say that's wrong, here's the real and here's the real answer, or here's the vetted information. So yeah, so I think there's that. And I think obviously people need to be skeptical, have critical thinking skills at Media Savvy because it is the Wild West now. And so you know.
'''E:''' Defame, yeah.


'''E:''' Yeah, we're we have to look out for ourselves.
'''S:''' It doesn't mean you can't fact check. Fact checking doesn't mean you don't have free speech. It means is there somebody who's going to look it up and say that's wrong, here's the real answer, or here's the vetted information. So yeah, so I think there's that. And I think obviously people need to be skeptical, have critical thinking skills at media savvy because it is the Wild West now.
 
'''E:''' Yeah, we're we have to look out for ourselves more than ever.


'''S:''' More than ever, absolutely.
'''S:''' More than ever, absolutely.
Line 165: Line 177:
'''E:''' It was true 20-30 years ago, it's more true today.
'''E:''' It was true 20-30 years ago, it's more true today.


'''S:''' Yeah, but but you know, again, having said that, you know, being somebody who spends a lot of time on TikTok because of we're we're promoting skeptical content on TikTok, it is a cesspool of misinformation, anti intellectualism and just utter nonsense.
'''S:''' Yeah, but again, having said that, being somebody who spends a lot of time on TikTok because of we're we're promoting skeptical content on TikTok, it is a cesspool of misinformation, anti intellectualism and just utter nonsense.


'''E:''' Oh gosh, if you don't have some minimum level of, of, of intellectual protection, you know, like mental protection against that, you will, you will fall prey to so much stuff you don't even realize you're falling prey to it.
'''E:''' Oh gosh, if you don't have some minimum level of intellectual protection like mental protection against that, you will fall prey to so much stuff you don't even realize you're falling prey to it.


'''S:''' But we, but again, we live in a democracy. So we also have to think about this statistically. Like if you know a majority of people take over into radicalized ignorance, that's the society that we have. Doesn't matter if it's 51%, that's now the ruling majority of our of our democracy.
'''S:''' But we, but again, we live in a democracy. So we also have to think about this statistically. Like if a majority of people take over into radicalized ignorance, that's the society that we have. Doesn't matter if it's 51%, that's now the ruling majority of our democracy.


'''C:''' And it's going to be that way if we don't prioritize education. Yeah, we, you know, that has to be at the top of our list.
'''C:''' And it's going to be that way if we don't prioritize education.


'''S:''' But then that that also becomes a war, as we know, because then you. Have absolutely some mistakes. Fighting against teaching critical thinking, you know.
'''S:''' Yeah.
 
'''C:''' That has to be at the top of our list.
 
'''S:''' But then that that also becomes a war, as we know because then you have-
 
'''C:''' Absolutely.
 
'''S:''' -some states fighting against teaching critical thinking, you know.


'''C:''' Or just, I don't know, funding schools?
'''C:''' Or just, I don't know, funding schools?


'''S:''' Yeah, like. There are some basic answers as you all right.
'''S:''' There are some basics there.
 
'''E:''' No easy answers as usual.


'''B:''' Steve, Steve, can we talk about something positive, fun and cool?
'''B:''' Steve, Steve, can we talk about something positive, fun and cool?


'''S:''' Yes, that's I'm just about to pivot, just about to pivot to we're not going to solve the not going to solve this problem.
'''S:''' Yes, I'm just about to pivot, we're not going to solve this problem. We're just going to whine about it.
 
'''B:''' We're just going to whine about it.


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'''B:''' Haunted graveyard. Bob, tell us about nuclear electric propulsion. Oh yeah, babe, but.
'''S:''' Bob, tell us about nuclear electric propulsion.


'''E:''' That doesn't exist.
'''B:''' Oh yeah, babe.


'''B:''' All right, so this was fun. 2 cool companies have signed a strategic partnership to create a powerful nuclear electric rocket that could finally make serious progress in ending the dominance of chemical rockets for space travel. And I want this to happen so bad. So bad that I don't even care about the grammar of this sentence. Wait.
'''E:''' What? That doesn't exist.


'''E:''' A minute. Hang on. We in the, in the last 12 months, we must have touched on at least 6 or 8 News items that have talked and we've and we've come to the conclusion that it's, it's chemical propulsion and that's it. That's the only way we get anywhere.
'''B:''' All right, so this was fun. 2 cool companies have signed a strategic partnership to create a powerful nuclear electric rocket that could finally make serious progress in ending the dominance of chemical rockets for space travel. And I want this to happen so bad. So bad that I don't even care about the grammar of this sentence.


'''B:''' No, right.
'''E:''' Wait a minute. Hang on. We in the last 12 months, we must have touched on at least 6 or 8 news items and we've come to the conclusion that it's chemical propulsion and that's it. That's the only way we get anywhere.
 
'''B:''' No.


'''E:''' Isn't that kind of what we concluded?
'''E:''' Isn't that kind of what we concluded?


'''B:''' Chemical propulsion. I'll talk a little bit about this at the end of my talk, but chemical propulsion is is going to stay for quite a long time to get to orbit, but once you're in orbit, it's days are numbered. Absolutely, absolutely. OK, so so the the two companies are Ad Astra and Space Nuclear Corporation, also simply called Space Nukes, which is an awesome name so so.
'''B:''' Chemical propulsion. I'll talk a little bit about this at the end of my talk, but chemical propulsion is going to stay for quite a long time to get to orbit, but once you're in orbit, it's days are numbered. Absolutely, absolutely. OK, so two companies are Ad Astra and Space Nuclear Corporation, also simply called Space Nukes, which is an awesome name.


'''C:''' That's terrifying name.
'''C:''' That's terrifying name.


'''B:''' I know it's fun. It's fun, though. Let's start with the rocket company Ad Astra. They've been developing an electric rocket engine called Vasimir. They describe it on their website as a disruptive development. I love some disruptive development in the space propulsion status quo. It's the product of more than 40 years of research in plasma physics and electric propulsion, first at the United Department, United States Department of Energy, and NASA, and later now at at Astro Rocket Company. Now, electric rocket engines are distinct from chemical rockets. We all know. We all know chemical rockets and I barely tolerate them at this point. As the name implies, they use electricity to accelerate propellant. Vasimir rocket engines are different than other well known electric engines that I'm sure you have heard of, especially if you listen to the show, namely ion engines and Hall effect thrusters. Jay talked about them a little while ago. These VASIMIR is different than those Vasimir is in some ways a hybrid of those 22 hybrid and many, many call VASIMIR, yeah, many call VASIMIR, it's a magnetoplasma. It's a better descriptor, much better than ion engine or Hall effect. This technique is different in that it uses powerful radio waves to heat a gas propellant, and that gas propellant then becomes the most common state of matter in the universe. What is that?
'''B:''' I know. It's fun, though. Let's start with the rocket company Ad Astra. They've been developing an electric rocket engine called VASIMIR. They describe it on their website as a disruptive development. I love some disruptive development in the space propulsion status quo. It's the product of more than 40 years of research in plasma physics and electric propulsion, first at the United States Department of Energy, and NASA, and later now at at Astro Rocket Company. Now, electric rocket engines are distinct from chemical rockets. We all know chemical rockets and I barely tolerate them at this point. As the name implies, they use electricity to accelerate propellant. VASIMIR rocket engines are different than other well known electric engines that I'm sure you have heard of, especially if you listen to the show, namely ion engines and Hall-effect thrusters. Jay talked about them a little while ago. These VASIMIR is different than those. VASIMIR is in some ways a hybrid of those two.
 
'''J:''' It's a hybrid.
 
'''B:''' It's a hybrid. Many call VASIMIR, it's a magnetoplasma. It's a better descriptor, much better than ion engine or Hall-effect. This technique is different in that it uses powerful radio waves to heat a gas propellant, and that gas propellant then becomes the most common state of matter in the universe. What is that?


'''S:''' Plasma.
'''S:''' Plasma.


'''B:''' Plasma.
'''B:''' Plasma. Yes.


'''C:''' Yes, plasma's the most common.
'''C:''' Plasma's the most common?


'''B:''' All Stars are plasma. So that basically does that right there. So a plasma, there's a soup of free electrons and positive ions, basically just unbinds the electrons from the, from the atomic nucleons, a very hot charged gas, so that this super gas then can now be controlled by magnetic field. And that was the goal. It's ionized so that it can be controlled and that magnetic field guides and accelerates the plasma out the back of the rocket as a potent rocket thrust. Thank you. Newton's third law. So, so that's basically how it works. Very basically. So cool stuff. But you're, you're some of you might be thinking, well, what does VASIMIR stand for, right? It's got to stand for something, right? It's got to be an acronym. VASIMIR stands for Variable Specific Imulse Magneto LASMA rocket. And those first 3 words Variable specific Imulse make this rocket incredible and unique chemical rocket. So, so to explain that, let's let's talk about this chemical rocket fuel on this is a really interesting angle. Chemical rocket fuel reaches thousands of degrees, very hot, right? Thousands of degrees. But electric plasma engines can get to millions of degrees. And that is a critical distinction. So because the higher the temperature, think about it, the higher the temperature, the more, the more the, the whatever is heated to that degree is bouncing around hitting each other all the atoms. The higher the temperature, the faster the exhaust. And that means that every gram of fuel can deliver more energy, right? So, so going from thousands of degrees to millions of degrees. Therefore, it means that the propellant is more effectively being converted into thrust. So you got that. So this increase in efficiency for rockets is expressed as specific impulse ISP, a critical rocketry word if ever there was one. If you if you, if you read about rockets and rocket technology, you have probably come across specific impulse ISP. It's basically discussing it deals with the efficiency, how effectively the propellant is converted into thrust. Now, chemical rockets typically have an ISP rating in the hundreds. VASIMIR could have an ISP over 5000. So keep that in mind out. So that's, that's the background. So VASIMIR stands for a variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket. So that means that this rocket, this rocket can actually change its specific impulse depending on the needs of the specific mission that it is on. I'm not aware of of really any other rocket design that that really does this like this.
'''B:''' All stars are plasma. So that basically does that right there. So a plasma, there's a soup of free electrons and positive ions, basically just unbinds the electrons from the atomic nucleons, a very hot charged gas, so this super gas then can now be controlled by magnetic field. And that was the goal. It's ionized so that it can be controlled and that magnetic field guides and accelerates the plasma out the back of the rocket as a potent rocket thrust. Thank you Newton's third law. So that's basically how it works. Very basically. So cool stuff. But some of you might be thinking, well, what does VASIMIR stand for, right? It's got to stand for something, right? It's got to be an acronym. VASIMIR stands for Variable Specific Impulse Magneto LASMA rocket. And those first 3 words Variable specific Impulse make this rocket incredible and unique. So to explain that, let's talk about this. Chemical rocket fuel, this is a really interesting angle. Chemical rocket fuel reaches thousands of degrees, very hot, right? Thousands of degrees. But electric plasma engines can get to millions of degrees. And that is a critical distinction. So because the higher the temperature, think about it, the higher the temperature, the more the whatever is heated to that degree is bouncing around hitting each other all the atoms. The higher the temperature, the faster the exhaust. And that means that every gram of fuel can deliver more energy, right? So going from thousands of degrees to millions of degrees therefore means that the propellant is more effectively being converted into thrust. So you got that. So this increase in efficiency for rockets is expressed as specific impulse ISP, a critical rocketry word if ever there was one. If you if you read about rockets and rocket technology, you have probably come across specific impulse, ISP. It's basically deals with the efficiency, how effectively the propellant is converted into thrust. Now, chemical rockets typically have an ISP rating in the hundreds. VASIMIR could have an ISP over 5000. So keep that in mind out. So that's the background. So VASIMIR stands for a variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket. So that means that this rocket can actually change its specific impulse depending on the needs of the specific mission that it is on. I'm not aware of of really any other rocket design that really does this like this.


'''C:''' Sorry Bob, define impulse again.
'''C:''' Sorry Bob, define impulse again.


'''B:''' ISP specific impulse is a measure of the, of how efficiently the fuel is converted into thrust. And remember as I said, that the higher the temperature, the faster it shoots out the back. And, and because it's going faster, that means you're getting more bang for your buck for that, for that fuel. So what does this mean this variable specific impulse, What does that mean for this rocket? So that means say you're near a gravity, you're near the gravity of a planet and you need some extra thrust. You can just hit the dial and you can lower the ISP and you get more thrust. You know, not, not chemical rocket like thrust, but you're still getting much more thrust than you would think from a, from an electric rocket. But remember, though, when you got a lot of thrust, though, it's, it's less efficient. The ISP is going down, so it, it, it becomes less efficient, but you could do that on demand. So there on the other hand, if the rocket is cruising through deep space, the rocket can be switched to high ISP mode, you know, like a high gear and become super efficient. And then you're using, you're using the the fuel that's available just in very time, much more time, 90 amounts and then otherwise. So now remember, acceleration is low in this mode, right? Because your, your throat, the fuel, the thrust that you're throwing out is going very, very fast, but you're not throwing out a lot of it, right? That's kind of inherent in these types of rockets. So it's not throwing out as much mass as a chemical rocket, but what it is throwing out is throwing at very, very, very, very high speed. So acceleration is low in this mode, but it doesn't matter in for a lot of missions, right, because you're the velocity, it can be built up over time, slowly over time, and eventually even eventually going faster than chemical rocket speeds. So this this rocket can actually dial up or down. It can go into low gear near a near a gravity where it needs higher thrust, or it could go into a high gear, a high ISP mode where it's super efficient and can cruise. It can cruise and accelerate for weeks or months or even longer. So that's that's what you could do with this, this type of rocket design. So that's all great and stuff, but all that awesomeness, especially ionizing the fuel requires a lot of power. And that is one of the key problems with VASIMIR. So in space that typically means that solar panels or perhaps RT GS radio isotope thermal generators, but neither of those options are are really a good fit for VASIMIR. Solar panels would need to be stupidly large to supply enough power and the RT GS are great for a Voyager or or Perseverance, but not for an engine like this. So we need something to soup up that that that can get high density electronics, you know, electrical energy for this Vasimir. And this is where space nuclear corporation, Space nukes comes into play. They were famous for their killer power device. I talked about that on episode 859. Killer power is essentially a small nuclear reactor made to power electronics on the moon, Mars, and deep space away from from easy solar panels or, or, or other types of technology that can get you what you need. Currently, it's designed to supply one to 10 kilowatts of electrical power. Space Nukes has demonstrated A1 kilowatt device back in 2018 and it's now working with US Space Force on a project called JET, which is pretty fun for a 12 kilowatt version I assume. Though I got to say that in the near future, the US Space Force will be renamed X Force. So I'm just going to throw that out there, see if that happens. Kilopower Now, Jay, you, you and I were talking about this earlier. Kilopower uses a sterling heat engine, which is a very, very efficient engine that convert heat from the reactor into electricity. It's more it's very efficient, more efficient than solar panels and it can operate get this for 15 years continuously, continuously. That that just blows my mind. I want a few of those under my damn house now. OK, So the obvious idea here is that this part, this partnership is to integrate the nuclear reactor with the propulsion technology vastly leveling up the VASIMIR, right? That mean it would be an amazing. The company partnership is described this way on the Ad Astro website. The Memorandum of Understanding MOU Memorandum for Understanding between Ad Astra and Space Nukes outlines a shared vision and passion for developing and demonstrating NEP nuclear electric propulsion technology and establishes a framework by which both companies will jointly pursue technical and business development. David Poston, CTO of Space Nuke said nuclear electric propulsion will achieve game changing performance via stepwise technology evolution. Our plan will begin with 100 kilowatt plus nuclear electric propulsion system as a stepping stone to get this a less than 5 kilogram per kilowatt multi MW NEP system. That's with the capability to reduce the round trip human transit time to Mars from more than a year to a few months. So they're saying with this, with this 100 kilowatt system that they are developing that they'll hopefully get to before too long, they could take a round, a round trip human transit time to Mars from more than a year to a few months. That's a that's a huge, huge game changer in getting to Mars. A few months. The risk from, you know, solar radiation and and galactic radiation is much less three months compared to over 12 months could be a game changer. Now these these plans are in the early stages, but they say in the press release the partnership aims to demonstrate high power NEP in a flight program by the end of the decade and commercialize the technology in the twenty 30s. So that seems fairly aggressive. Commercialize it by the in the twenty 30s. I hope these two crazy kids can make it work. So this is really fascinating. I really hope that they, I mean, coming up with a nuclear electric propulsion engine like this is just it's something that I, I hope I can really see in my in my lifetime. Now remember, I got to say as a closing, keep in mind a VASIMIR rocket, even in low gear, right? Even in low ISP with maximum thrust still won't be able to launch off the surface of the earth. Gravity is it's too high, right? Gravity says way too high. It's it's it's thrust to weight ratio is too low. It's still not as good as chemical rocket. There are however extreme nuclear rocket designs that could make potentially a surface launch possible. But the engineering problems are non trivial. Not to mention regulatory, environmental and moral problems. Since it would would most likely or probably or maybe spew radiation over half a continent. It could be nasty stuff, but it might It might work. It might work, but yeah, so it unfortunately, it's so it seems likely to me that the only reaction engine, you know, something that throws stuff out the back to take advantage of Newton's third law, the only reaction engine that will ever launch from the Earth to orbit will probably be chemical rockets, unfortunately. But I hope orbital rings eventually will make them finally obsolete in a couple 100 years. But we're going to wait for that one. No, Steve, I'm not Orbital rings could make could make the chemical rockets obsolete because you won't. You can get to the orbital rings because you could, because you can get to them. They could be low altitude. They they're not in low, you know, they're not in Earth orbit. They're much, much lower because they're, they're orbital rings, which are a different beast entirely, which we've never really talked about. Yeah. They're, I mean, they're just super sci-fi, physically possible, but yeah, very, very sci-fi. But yeah, chemical rockets are here to stay. But I think nuclear rockets are going to it seems inevitable they will take over deep space, you know, rocket missions and anything outside of Earth orbit will probably go, you know, mostly nuclear and then eventually even fusion once we got those. But but in the so the so this this Vasimir with the killer power joining this marriage here between these two could be really could be a game changer that I hope you see in the next 10 to 15 years really, really take off.
'''B:''' ISP, specific impulse is a measure of how efficiently the fuel is converted into thrust. And remember as I said, that the higher the temperature, the faster it shoots out the back. And because it's going faster, that means you're getting more bang for your buck for that fuel. So what does this mean this variable specific impulse, what does that mean for this rocket? So that means say you're near the gravity of a planet and you need some extra thrust. You can just hit the dial and you can lower the ISP and you get more thrust. You know, not chemical rocket like thrust, but you're still getting much more thrust than you would think from an electric rocket. But remember, though, when you got a lot of thrust, though, it's less efficient. The ISP is going down, so it becomes less efficient, but you could do that on demand. So there on the other hand, if the rocket is cruising through deep space, the rocket can be switched to high ISP mode like a high gear and become super efficient. And then you're using the fuel that's available just in very tiny amounts and then otherwise. So now remember, acceleration is low in this mode, right? Because the thrust that you're throwing out is going very, very fast, but you're not throwing out a lot of it, right? That's kind of inherent in these types of rockets. So it's not throwing out as much mass as a chemical rocket, but what it is throwing out is throwing at very, very, very, very high speed. So acceleration is low in this mode, but it doesn't matter in for a lot of missions, because you're the velocity, it can be built up over time, slowly over time, and eventually going faster than chemical rocket speeds. So this rocket can actually dial up or down. It can go into low gear near a near a gravity where it needs higher thrust, or it could go into a high gear, a high ISP mode where it's super efficient and it can cruise and accelerate for weeks or months or even longer. So that's what you could do with this type of rocket design. So that's all great and stuff, but all that awesomeness, especially ionizing the fuel requires a lot of power. And that is one of the key problems with VASIMIR. So in space that typically means that solar panels or perhaps RTGs, radio isotope thermal generators, but neither of those options are really a good fit for VASIMIR. Solar panels would need to be stupidly large to supply enough power and the RTGs are great for a Voyager or Perseverance, but not for an engine like this. So we need something to soup up that can get high density electrical energy for this VASIMIR. And this is where space nuclear corporation, Space nukes comes into play. They were famous for their killer power device. I talked about that on episode 859. Killer power is essentially a small nuclear reactor made to power electronics on the moon, Mars, and deep space away from easy solar panels or other types of technology that can get you what you need. Currently, it's designed to supply one to 10 kilowatts of electrical power. Space Nukes has demonstrated A1 kilowatt device back in 2018 and it's now working with US Space Force on a project called JETSON, which is pretty fun, for a 12 kilowatt version. I assume though I got to say that in the near future, the US Space Force will be renamed X Force. So I'm just going to throw that out there, see if that happens. Kilopower Now, Jay, you and I were talking about this earlier. Kilopower uses a sterling heat engine, which is a very, very efficient engine that convert heat from the reactor into electricity. It's very efficient, more efficient than solar panels and it can operate for 15 years continuously. That that just blows my mind. I want a few of those under my damn house. OK, so the obvious idea here is that this partnership is to integrate the nuclear reactor with the propulsion technology vastly leveling up the VASIMIR, right? That mean it would be an amazing. The company partnership is described this way on the Ad Astro website. The Memorandum of Understanding MOU, Memorandum for Understanding between Ad Astra and Space Nukes outlines a shared vision and passion for developing and demonstrating NEP, nuclear electric propulsion technology and establishes a framework by which both companies will jointly pursue technical and business development. David Poston, CTO of Space Nuke said nuclear electric propulsion will achieve game changing performance via stepwise technology evolution. Our plan will begin with 100 kilowatt plus nuclear electric propulsion system as a stepping stone to get this a less than 5 kilogram per kilowatt multi MW NEP system. That's with the capability to reduce the round trip human transit time to Mars from more than a year to a few months. So they're saying with this 100 kilowatt system that they are developing that they'll hopefully get to before too long, they could take a round trip human transit time to Mars from more than a year to a few months. That's a huge game changer in getting to Mars. A few months. The risk from solar radiation and galactic radiation is much less. Three months compared to over 12 months could be a game changer. Now these plans are in the early stages, but they say in the press release the partnership aims to demonstrate high power NEP in a flight program by the end of the decade and commercialize the technology in the 2030s. So that seems fairly aggressive. Commercialize it by the in the 2030s. I hope these two crazy kids can make it work. So this is really fascinating. I really hope that they, I mean, coming up with a nuclear electric propulsion engine like this is something that I hope I can really see in my in my lifetime. Now remember, I got to say as a closing, keep in mind a VASIMIR rocket, even in low gear, right? Even in low ISP with maximum thrust still won't be able to launch off the surface of the earth. Gravity is it's too high, right? Gravity is way too high. It's thrust to weight ratio is too low. It's still not as good as chemical rocket. There are however extreme nuclear rocket designs that could make potentially a surface launch possible. But the engineering problems are non trivial. Not to mention regulatory, environmental and moral problems. Since it would would most likely or probably or maybe spew radiation over half a continent. It could be nasty stuff, but it might work. It might work, but yeah, so it unfortunately, it's so it seems likely to me that the only reaction engine, something that throws stuff out the back to take advantage of Newton's third law, the only reaction engine that will ever launch from the Earth to orbit will probably be chemical rockets, unfortunately. But I hope orbital rings eventually will make them finally obsolete in a couple 100 years. But we're going to wait for that one. No, Steve, I'm not, Orbital rings could make could make the chemical rockets obsolete because you can get to the orbital rings because you can get to them. They could be low altitude. They're not in low Earth orbit. They're much, much lower because they're orbital rings, which are a different beast entirely, which we've never really talked about. I mean, they're just super sci-fi, physically possible, but yeah, very, very sci-fi. But yeah, chemical rockets are here to stay. But I think nuclear rockets, it seems inevitable they will take over deep space rocket missions and anything outside of Earth orbit will probably go mostly nuclear and then eventually even fusion once we got those. This VASIMIR with the killer power joining this marriage here between these two could be really a game changer that I hope you see in the next 10 to 15 years really, really take off.
 
'''S:''' It, I mean, yeah, something like this is definitely going to be a game changer if we're ever going to be going to Mars and back, you know?
 
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah, I'm really getting optimistic about it because also you've got a lot of countries trying to control sis lunar space, the space between Earth and and the moon. And it's it's it's not just like a science thing or AG wow, how cool it. This is like a government like control thing. We're like, we must control this parcel of space. So that means they're going to dump a lot of money into it. And so, and we've talked about this a bit before, but I, so I think we nuclear rockets, we could be, be very common in, in sis lunar space, because you got to move material vast distances between the Earth and the moon very efficiently and very fast. And you're not going to do that with chemical rockets. So the governments are going to start pouring money into nuclear rockets and, and NASA has expressed interest in being part of that so that they can then take that technology, whether it's whether it's VASIMIR or some other type of nuclear rocketry, take that and, and expand on it so that it can go beyond, beyond the moon tomorrow. So we'll see it one way or the other, just a matter of when.
 
'''S:''' Well everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors, Curiosity Weekly.
 
'''J:''' Guys on Curiosity Weekly podcast from Discovery, you're going to hear about some of the biggest questions and ideas shaping our world. And each week, they will unpack breaking science and tech news with expert guests who make it all make sense.


'''B:''' Yeah, guys, this is a real go to Breaking Science podcast. They talk about stuff like this one was good. A study that let AI tag along with a toddler to learn language the human way. That sounds pretty cool. The brightest object in the known universe. And check this one out. A bacteria that turns plastic into spider webs. Go to Curiosity Weekly to check that one out.
'''S:''' Yeah, something like this is definitely going to be a game changer if we're ever going to be going to Mars and back, you know?


'''E:''' Listen to Curiosity Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.
'''B:''' Yeah, yeah, I'm really getting optimistic about it because also you've got a lot of countries trying to control Cislunar space, the space between Earth and the moon. And it's not just like a science thing or a gee wow, how cool it. This is like a government control thing. We must control this parcel of space. So that means they're going to dump a lot of money into it. And so, and we've talked about this a bit before, so I think nuclear rockets, could be very common in Cislunar space, because you got to move material vast distances between the Earth and the moon very efficiently and very fast. And you're not going to do that with chemical rockets. So the governments are going to start pouring money into nuclear rockets and NASA has expressed interest in being part of that so that they can then take that technology, whether it's VASIMIR or some other type of nuclear rocketry, take that and expand on it so that it can go beyond the moon tomorrow. So we'll see it one way or the other, just a matter of when.
 
'''S:''' All right, guys, let's get back to the show.


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'''S:''' Cara, get us up to date on some of the science surrounding the LA fires.
'''S:''' Cara, get us up to date on some of the science surrounding the LA fires.


'''C:''' OK. So first, I guess a little bit of an update just on the status of the fires because they are much more contained than they were when we talked last week. The fire that's closest to me, the Eaton Fire in Altadena, CA and Pasadena, CA, it is now 14,117 acres and 45% contained. And southwest of me, the Palisades Fire, which is larger at 23,713 acres is now 19% contained. We still don't have total numbers on how many structures have been destroyed. In terms of the death toll from the LA fires is 25 is the latest. So nine people in the Palisades fire, 16 people in the Eaton fire, but that number is is probably going to rise. Today was another Santa Ana extreme wind warning day. I think the hope is that things will continue to get better and better after this. So I wanted to talk about a few things that came up for me. I think part of this is sort of like a PSA, and part of it is, you know, obviously just keeping up with what's going on. But boots on the ground, these are the things that I recognized and that I found kind of important to focus on. The first one is I wanted to talk about this incredible app that if you live in LA, this has been your lifeline throughout this past week. It's called watch duty. If you don't have watch duty, I recognize, I recognize, I recommend that you download it. Right now it's only active in 22 states, but the plan is to become nationwide. And who knows, maybe it'll even go global eventually. This is a, an app that is very, very easy to use. It's a 5O1C3, so it's a nonprofit and it was Co founded by two individuals who really basically lived through a fire and recognized that it was just really hard to find information because different government agencies were posting things on different sites and some of the information wasn't coming out in real time. And if anybody knows when there's a disaster going on, how difficult it is to get up to date information and how easy it is to doom scroll, they would recognize why watch duty is so important is a map. It's a really clean, easy to read map that has every evac zone listed, whether it's a level 2 or Level 3, whether it's a waiter a go. It shows the perimeter of the fire as soon as it's ready, it shows the containment. And then every press conference is summarized there. And there's a team of reporters who are vetted reporters who publish within the app when you click on the fires, the latest information. So, so there's a quote from one of the Co founders that said this is it came out of an idea that John had. He talked to me about it four years ago. We built the app in 60 days. It was run completely by volunteers, no full time staff. So side project for a lot of engineers. So the aim was to keep it as simple as possible. Now there are full time staff, but it's still very simple. There's no login, it doesn't scrape user data and it's completely free. You don't have to pay for it and there's no ads. And their view is we're never going to sell this thing. We will fundraise if we have to. This is a public service, so here's a quote from the other Co founder, Merritt. We've view what we were doing as a public service. It is a utility that everyone should have which is timely, relevant information for their safety during emergencies. Right now it's very scattered. Even the agencies themselves, which have the best intentions, their hands are tied by bureaucracy or contracts. We partner with government sources with a focus on firefighting so they're able to get push delays out fast. Like 1.5 million people downloaded the thing in like a few days and it never crashed. Here's another quote that I think is a really important one, and this speaks to what we were talking about earlier. All information is vetted for quality over quantity. We have a code of conduct for reporters, for example. We never report on injuries or give specific addresses. It's all tailored with a specific set of criteria. We do not editorialize. We report on what we have heard on the scanners and you know, this really did save lives. This app we, we will probably after the fact be able to directly link it to saving lives because people were able to know when their evac zones were updated to the minute, which is a a rare experience in a disaster of this of this scale. Fires fast, really fast and the Santa Anas were blowing upwards of 90 plus mph. It shifted very quickly and in those first two days of the fire, the winds were too strong for air suppression. So this was just boots on the ground firefighting. It spread like wildfire as they say. Speaking of that, a friend of mine reached out to me during this whole thing. And she goes, can they use salt water to put out a fire? And I was like, I don't know. And then we could just stop talking about it. And then a day later, I saw that the Super scoopers were here. And I was like, OK, this is interesting. I want to dig a little bit deeper. So after the winds calmed down a couple days into the fire, these pilots flew planes. They're called super Scoopers. And what they do is they skim 1500 gallons of seawater out of the ocean. They just fly down to the surface of the ocean, skim the seawater and then go dump it on the fires just like they would freshwater or fire retardant. I had never seen or heard of this before. And so I found an interesting article online that was written by some researchers who are studying how high saline water effects inland ecosystems. Because it seems like a really obvious answer, right? The coast was burning. The fire spread literally to the shoreline, and all the houses along the shoreline in the Pacific Palisades and many in Malibu burned to the ground. So there's so much water right there. The hydrants were at certain points, they couldn't keep the pressure up and they just weren't able to deliver the water because they're trying to fight a basically a wildfire using a civic water system, which is not what it's built for. Why not use seawater? So it seems really obvious, but apparently there are some real downsides to this. I mean, we had to do it, but there are some real downsides. What do you guys think is a big one?
'''C:''' OK. So first, I guess a little bit of an update just on the status of the fires because they are much more contained than they were when we talked last week. The fire that's closest to me, the Eaton Fire in Altadena, CA and Pasadena, CA, it is now 14,117 acres and 45% contained. And southwest of me, the Palisades Fire, which is larger at 23,713 acres is now 19% contained. We still don't have total numbers on how many structures have been destroyed. In terms of the death toll from the LA fires is 25 is the latest. So nine people in the Palisades fire, 16 people in the Eaton fire, but that number is is probably going to rise. Today was another Santa Ana extreme wind warning day. I think the hope is that things will continue to get better and better after this. So I wanted to talk about a few things that came up for me. I think part of this is sort of like a PSA, and part of it is obviously just keeping up with what's going on. But boots on the ground, these are the things that I recognized and that I found kind of important to focus on. The first one is I wanted to talk about this incredible app that if you live in LA, this has been your lifeline throughout this past week. It's called watch duty. If you don't have watch duty, I recommend that you download it. Right now it's only active in 22 states, but the plan is to become nationwide. And who knows, maybe it'll even go global eventually. This is an app that is very, very easy to use. It's a 5O1C3, so it's a nonprofit and it was co-founded by two individuals who really basically lived through a fire and recognized that it was just really hard to find information because different government agencies were posting things on different sites and some of the information wasn't coming out in real time. And if anybody knows when there's a disaster going on, how difficult it is to get up to date information and how easy it is to doom scroll, they would recognize why watch duty is so important. Is a map. It's a really clean, easy to read map that has every evac zone listed, whether it's a level 2 or level 3, whether it's a waiter a go. It shows the perimeter of the fire as soon as it's ready, it shows the containment. And then every press conference is summarized there. And there's a team of reporters who are vetted reporters who publish within the app when you click on the fires, the latest information. So there's a quote from one of the co-founders that said this is it came out of an idea that John had. He talked to me about it four years ago. We built the app in 60 days. It was run completely by volunteers, no full time staff. So side project for a lot of engineers. So the aim was to keep it as simple as possible. Now there are full time staff, but it's still very simple. There's no login, it doesn't scrape user data and it's completely free. You don't have to pay for it and there's no ads. And their view is we're never going to sell this thing. We will fundraise if we have to. This is a public service, so here's a quote from the other co-founder, Merritt. We view what we were doing as a public service. It is a utility that everyone should have which is timely, relevant information for their safety during emergencies. Right now it's very scattered. Even the agencies themselves, which have the best intentions, their hands are tied by bureaucracy or contracts. We partner with government sources with a focus on firefighting so they're able to get push delays out fast. Like 1.5 million people downloaded the thing in like a few days and it never crashed. Here's another quote that I think is a really important one, and this speaks to what we were talking about earlier. All information is vetted for quality over quantity. We have a code of conduct for reporters, for example we never report on injuries or give specific addresses. It's all tailored with a specific set of criteria. We do not editorialize. We report on what we have heard on the scanners. And this really did save lives. This app, we will probably after the fact be able to directly link it to saving lives because people were able to know when their evac zones were updated to the minute, which is a a rare experience in a disaster of this of this scale. Fire is fast, really fast. And the Santa Anas were blowing upwards of 90 plus mph. It shifted very quickly and in those first two days of the fire, the winds were too strong for air suppression. So this was just boots on the ground firefighting. It spread like wildfire as they say. Speaking of that, a friend of mine reached out to me during this whole thing. And she goes, can they use salt water to put out a fire? And I was like, I don't know. And then we just stop talking about it. And then a day later, I saw that the super scoopers were here. And I was like, OK, this is interesting. I want to dig a little bit deeper. So after the winds calmed down a couple days into the fire, these pilots flew planes. They're called super scoopers. And what they do is they skim 1500 gallons of seawater out of the ocean. They just fly down to the surface of the ocean, skim the seawater and then go dump it on the fires just like they would freshwater or fire retardant. I had never seen or heard of this before. And so I found an interesting article online that was written by some researchers who are studying how high saline water effects inland ecosystems. Because it seems like a really obvious answer, right? The coast was burning. The fire spread literally to the shoreline, and all the houses along the shoreline in the Pacific Palisades and many in Malibu burned to the ground. So there's so much water right there. The hydrants were at certain points, they couldn't keep the pressure up and they just weren't able to deliver the water because they're trying to fight basically a wildfire using a civic water system, which is not what it's built for. Why not use seawater? So it seems really obvious, but apparently there are some real downsides to this. I mean, we had to do it, but there are some real downsides. What do you guys think is a big one?


'''E:''' Corrosion.
'''E:''' Corrosion.


'''C:''' Yeah. So not only is it corroding some of these firefighting systems, the firefighting equipment itself, but these researchers indicate that it may harm ecosystems. So. Yes. And we're starting to see this as a problem more and more, not just in in these urban wildfire scenarios, but also as climate change brings coastlines higher and deeper. Ecosystems that were never exposed to saltwater are now getting higher salinity, or they're finding themselves in higher salinity environments. And excessive salts can stress and kill plants. So these researchers did an experiment called Tempest where they went into these forests basically, and they added different salinities of water. They did it over the course of several years. They first did a 10 hour exposure of salty water that was a little bit more brackish, and they found that like it didn't really affect the forest. The next year they exposed it for 20 hours and the forest was mostly OK, but some of the Poplar trees were like acting a little funny. They started drawing water too slowly. And then the next year they did a 30 hour exposure, but something major shifted that year and that's that the rains didn't come. So what they think happened is that a lot of that salt was never washed away and things went S after the 30 hour exposure and the lack of rain. A lot of the trees started to brown in mid August instead of late September. The forest canopy was bare by mid-september like it was already winter. So it just the forest switched over much earlier. And then they also found that the water that was draining through the soils was brown instead of clear. So it wasn't maintaining its typical filtration capabilities. It was absorbing all sorts of clays and silts and different particulates and taking it with it, which could have, you know, intense downstream effects because you didn't have the water system operating as normal. So these researchers, they still don't know what the downstream effects of salt dumping on areas that aren't used to salt water will have, but they have a feeling that it's going to be large. And so that's going to be something that we're going to have to look out for here in, in Socal because, yes, large areas of forest and, and urban water supplies were overrun with, with saltwater because of these super scoopers, but they also put out the fires. And that's, you know, really important. And what else are we going to be cleaning up for a while? But we shouldn't clean up right now. That is the ash and the pollution. And so that's the last thing I wanted to touch on is these deadly downstream risks from these fires. So if you live in LA, even if you were far from the fires, you are dealing with hazardous air right now. And there's a lot of chatter about even if the AQI looks good, don't take that number at face value, not because it's not measuring what it says it's measuring, but it doesn't measure some of the things that are threatening to Angelenos right now. So AQI air quality index is a measure of how hazardous the air is outside to breathe. It's a measure of of pollution. And it it factors in a lot of different variables. One of the big ones is that 2.5 PM. You guys have heard of this? You see it on air filters sometimes. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Yeah, right. Well, no, the PM is actually just particulate matter.
'''C:''' Yeah. So not only is it corroding some of these firefighting systems, the firefighting equipment itself, but these researchers indicate that it may harm ecosystems.


'''US#03:''' Oh wow, yeah, not PPM.
'''B:''' That's what I was thinking.


'''C:''' OK, yeah, not PPMPM, so PM 2.5. You'll also sometimes see PM 10, like I have two Dyson air filters that I bought after the last fire when things were really smoky and they give you a bunch of different readings. I'm trying to think of all the things they tell you, like the ozone maybe, but they 2, the 1st 2 are always PM 2.5 and PM 10. So that stands for particulate matter 2.5 microns or less and particulate matter 10 microns or less. Today when you look outside, it looks clear. The smoke is not as nearly as thick, and sometimes people go, oh, it looks clear, it must be healthy. The scary thing is the things that are the most dangerous for you, you can't see them because they're small. So something that is a 2.5 PM, which is so smaller than 2.5 microns can enter your lungs. Sometimes they're so small that they can enter your bloodstream directly through your lungs. Larger particles, PM 10 or larger, they're usually caught by your nasal epithelium. They're usually caught, you know, by your throat before they get into your respiratory tract or your bloodstream. And very often when we look at AQI, there are there's a combination of factors that go into the algorithm for calculating AQI. Certain things that are in the air right now from these fires are not even measured by an AQI index. So when a house that was built in 1920 goes up in flames, you can expect asbestos volatiles from paint, plastics, a lot of different plastic. Because it's not just the house, right? It's all the furniture, it's the varnishes, it's the adhesives that we're using. Yeah, it's every single thing. And that's becoming like aerosolized. And it's, it's spreading for miles. So I, I mentioned this last week, but I, I think it bears repeating. At its worst where I live in my house, the AQI was 375.
'''C:''' And we're starting to see this as a problem more and more, not just in in these urban wildfire scenarios, but also as climate change brings coastlines higher and deeper. Ecosystems that were never exposed to saltwater are now getting higher salinity, or they're finding themselves in higher salinity environments. And excessive salts can stress and kill plants. So these researchers did an experiment called Tempest where they went into these forests basically, and they added different salinities of water. They did it over the course of several years. They first did a 10 hour exposure of salty water that was a little bit more brackish, and they found that like it didn't really affect the forest. The next year they exposed it for 20 hours and the forest was mostly OK, but some of the Poplar trees were like acting a little funny. They started drawing water too slowly. And then the next year they did a 30 hour exposure, but something major shifted that year and that's that the rains didn't come. So what they think happened is that a lot of that salt was never washed away and things went south after the 30 hour exposure and the lack of rain. A lot of the trees started to brown in mid August instead of late September. The forest canopy was bare by mid-September like it was already winter. So it just the forest switched over much earlier. And then they also found that the water that was draining through the soils was brown instead of clear. So it wasn't maintaining its typical filtration capabilities. It was absorbing all sorts of clays and silts and different particulates and taking it with it, which could have intense downstream effects because you didn't have the water system operating as normal. So these researchers, they still don't know what the downstream effects of salt dumping on areas that aren't used to salt water will have, but they have a feeling that it's going to be large. And so that's going to be something that we're going to have to look out for here in, in SoCal because, yes, large areas of forest and urban water supplies were overrun with saltwater because of these super scoopers, but they also put out the fires. And that's really important. And what else are we going to be cleaning up for a while? But we shouldn't clean up right now. That is the ash and the pollution. And so that's the last thing I wanted to touch on is these deadly downstream risks from these fires. So if you live in LA, even if you were far from the fires, you are dealing with hazardous air right now. And there's a lot of chatter about even if the AQI looks good, don't take that number at face value, not because it's not measuring what it says it's measuring, but it doesn't measure some of the things that are threatening to Angelenos right now. So AQI, air quality index, is a measure of how hazardous the air is outside to breathe. It's a measure of of pollution. And it factors in a lot of different variables. One of the big ones is that 2.5 PM. You guys have heard of this? You see it on air filters sometimes. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Yeah, right. Well, no, the PM is actually just particulate matter.


'''US#03:''' What's normal for you?
'''B:''' Oh wow, yeah, PM, not PPM.


'''C:''' Good healthy air is between 0 and 50. Zero to 50 means that's satisfactory. You can go outside fine. 50 to 100 is semi normal in Los Angeles. That means that it's acceptable. They call it moderate, but there may be a risk for people who have like asthma or other respiratory sensitivities. 100 to 150. Now we're talking unhealthy for sensitive groups. We sometimes see this in LA when the smog is very, very thick. So sensitive groups may experience health effects, but the general public may not notice. 1:50 to 200 unhealthy. That's the label, that's. Used. Flat out unhealthy. All of last week we never did below this. So every time even when we had a good air day, it was like 161-7200 to 300. Very unhealthy. This is a health alert. The risk of health effects is increased for everyone, and then 300 plus is called hazardous. That's when they show you the icon of the gas mask and they say health warning of emergency conditions. Everyone is more likely to be affected. So at its worst on I think it was Tuesday of last week, it might have been Wednesday, The AQI was 375 and hovering between 3:50 and 375 for several hours most of the day. It smelled like a campfire on the ground floor of my house. And when you walked outside, you would immediately cough or sneeze. So, you know, obviously, I'm still not leaving the house without an N95. And that is the public guidance right now is to wear a respirator when you leave the house, even if the AQI looks low. Because even if those 2.5 PMS aren't being picked up, there may be volatile volatiles in the air that aren't measured by AQI. So it's very, very important to remember that the fires are still burning. There's still a lot in the air. The ash on the ground is toxic. The ash on the ground is the large particulate matter that was made from houses, furniture and cars burning. This is not a wildfire, it's a wild urban fire. So the things that were burning were not just trees. And we have to remember that there. Yeah, there's guidance right now. You cannot use leaf blowers in Los Angeles. Do not think that it is safe to take a leaf blower or even a broom to sweep all that ash off of your property. You're putting it right back into the air. It's very, very dangerous. Here is an expert in the health effects of air pollution at UC San Diego said that Los Angeles in particular saw air pollution levels that could be raising daily mortality by between 5 and 15% just due to the air pollution alone from these fires. And obviously people with respiratory sensitivity as children and and older adults are, are more vulnerable. So be smart. Wear respirator when you go outside. Wear your N90 fives. I know you have a stash leftover from COVID. I don't think my house without one, even if it seems kind of, you know, clearer in, in these past couple of days. The fires are still burning. The winds are still shifting and we still don't know. That's the thing. We don't know the long term effects because usually when we study the health effects of wildfire exposure, it's a one and done or it's once and then again 10 years later. But when we're getting hit by wildfires in the same area and they're wild slash urban fires and you're getting multiple exposures a year, you know that's going to change things a lot. Here is a lovely quote from Doctor Lisa Patel, a pediatrician in San Francisco Bay and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. She said we are breathing in this toxic brew of volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and hexavalent chromium. All of it is noxious.
'''C:''' OK, yeah, not PPM, PM, so PM 2.5. You'll also sometimes see PM 10, like I have two Dyson air filters that I bought after the last fire when things were really smoky and they give you a bunch of different readings. I'm trying to think of all the things they tell you, like the ozone maybe, but the first 2 are always PM 2.5 and PM 10. So that stands for particulate matter 2.5 microns or less and particulate matter 10 microns or less. Today when you look outside, it looks clear. The smoke is not as nearly as thick, and sometimes people go, oh, it looks clear, it must be healthy. The scary thing is the things that are the most dangerous for you, you can't see them because they're small. So something that is a 2.5 PM, which is so smaller than 2.5 microns can enter your lungs. Sometimes they're so small that they can enter your bloodstream directly through your lungs. Larger particles, PM 10 or larger, they're usually caught by your nasal epithelium. They're usually caught by your throat before they get into your respiratory tract or your bloodstream. And very often when we look at AQI, there's a combination of factors that go into the algorithm for calculating AQI. Certain things that are in the air right now from these fires are not even measured by an AQI index. So when a house that was built in 1920 goes up in flames, you can expect asbestos, volatiles from paint, plastics, a lot of different plastic. Because it's not just the house, right? It's all the furniture, it's the varnishes, it's the adhesives that we're using. It's every single thing. And that's becoming like aerosolized. And it's spreading for miles. So I mentioned this last week, but I think it bears repeating. At its worst where I live in my house, the AQI was 375.


'''S:''' Yeah, One of the things that I heard reported was that, you know, the fire got so hot that the water pipes were melting or breaking and therefore water was leaking from a lot of locations, which was further reducing the water pressure and frustrating attempts at obviously controlling the fire. Like that's not a thing that you you deal with in a wildfire, but you do.
'''B:''' What's normal for you?


'''C:''' No, you never do, and you wouldn't. You wouldn't be tapping a urban hydrants and a wildfire. They're not built for that. They're not built to all be tapped at the same time.
'''C:''' Good healthy air is between 0 and 50. Zero to 50 means that's satisfactory. You can go outside fine. 50 to 100 is semi normal in Los Angeles. That means that it's acceptable. They call it moderate, but there may be a risk for people who have like asthma or other respiratory sensitivities. 100 to 150. Now we're talking unhealthy for sensitive groups. We sometimes see this in LA when the smog is very, very thick. So sensitive groups may experience health effects, but the general public may not notice. 150 to 200 unhealthy. That's the label that's used. Flat out unhealthy. All of last week we never did below this. So every time even when we had a good air day, it was like 161-170. 200 to 300. Very unhealthy. This is a health alert. The risk of health effects is increased for everyone, and then 300 plus is called hazardous. That's when they show you the icon of the gas mask and they say health warning of emergency conditions. Everyone is more likely to be affected. So at its worst on I think it was Tuesday of last week, it might have been Wednesday, the AQI was 375 and hovering between 350 and 375 for several hours most of the day. It smelled like a campfire on the ground floor of my house. And when you walked outside, you would immediately cough or sneeze. So obviously, I'm still not leaving the house without an N95. And that is the public guidance right now is to wear a respirator when you leave the house, even if the AQI looks low. Because even if those 2.5 PMS aren't being picked up, there may be volatiles in the air that aren't measured by AQI. So it's very, very important to remember that the fires are still burning. There's still a lot in the air. The ash on the ground is toxic. The ash on the ground is the large particulate matter that was made from houses, furniture and cars burning. This is not a wildfire, it's a wild urban fire. So the things that were burning were not just trees. And we have to remember that. There's guidance right now. You cannot use leaf blowers in Los Angeles. Do not think that it is safe to take a leaf blower or even a broom to sweep all that ash off of your property. You're putting it right back into the air. It's very, very dangerous. Here is an expert in the health effects of air pollution at UC San Diego said that Los Angeles in particular saw air pollution levels that could be raising daily mortality by between 5 and 15% just due to the air pollution alone from these fires. And obviously people with respiratory sensitivity as children and older adults are more vulnerable. So be smart. Wear respirator when you go outside. Wear your N90 fives. I know you have a stash leftover from COVID. I don't think my house without one, even if it seems kind of clearer in these past couple of days. The fires are still burning. The winds are still shifting and we still don't know. That's the thing. We don't know the long term effects because usually when we study the health effects of wildfire exposure, it's a one and done or it's once and then again 10 years later. But when we're getting hit by wildfires in the same area and they're wild/urban fires and you're getting multiple exposures a year, that's going to change things a lot. Here is a lovely quote from Doctor Lisa Patel, a pediatrician in San Francisco Bay and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. She said we are breathing in this toxic brew of volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and hexavalent chromium. All of it is noxious.


'''S:''' Right, exactly. Yeah, They're like one building, that one building.
'''S:''' Yeah, one of the things that I heard reported was that the fire got so hot that the water pipes were melting or breaking and therefore water was leaking from a lot of locations, which was further reducing the water pressure and frustrating attempts at obviously controlling the fire. Like that's not a thing that you you deal with in a wildfire.


'''C:''' On fire, yeah. And so that's that's why I think it's so frustrating when because everybody's upset, everybody's angry. But it's really heartbreaking being here in the city and seeing all the chatter that's like, it's your fault. It's your fault. It's your, it's, it's all you're hearing right now, not so much within the city, but from outside, kind of pointing fingers at La and saying, well, if this hadn't happened, this wouldn't have happened. Here's the thing. Climate change is real. The humidity outside right now is 25%. It hasn't rained so far this quote, rainy season. You know, usually by January it's rained. We talked about this last week. Fire season is usually summer, a little bit spring, a little fall. Santa Ana season is usually winter, a little bit spring, a little bit fall. The problem is when the Santa Anas come, but fire season never left because we didn't get any rain. So now at the winds are at their worst, and it's as dry as it's ever been outside. It's a recipe for disaster. And that's what's happening right now.
'''C:''' No, you never do, and you wouldn't be tapping a urban hydrants and a wildfire. They're not built for that. They're not built to all be tapped at the same time.
 
'''B:''' Right, exactly.
 
'''S:''' They're like one building, that one building is on fire.
 
'''C:''' And so that's why I think it's so frustrating because everybody's upset, everybody's angry. But it's really heartbreaking being here in the city and seeing all the chatter that's like, it's your fault. It's your fault. It's all you're hearing right now, not so much within the city, but from outside, kind of pointing fingers at LA and saying, well, if this hadn't happened, this wouldn't have happened. Here's the thing. Climate change is real. The humidity outside right now is 25%. It hasn't rained so far this rainy season. You know, usually by January it's rained. We talked about this last week. Fire season is usually summer, a little bit spring, a little fall. Santa Ana season is usually winter, a little bit spring, a little bit fall. The problem is when the Santa Anas come, but fire season never left because we didn't get any rain. So now at the winds are at their worst, and it's as dry as it's ever been outside. It's a recipe for disaster. And that's what's happening right now.


'''E:''' Perfect storm.
'''E:''' Perfect storm.


'''C:''' Yeah. And we do not have a wildfire water system in the middle of the Pacific Palisades, because what?
'''C:''' Yeah. And we do not have a wildfire water system in the middle of the Pacific Palisades.


'''E:''' Show me the city or the place on the earth that can. Handle exactly. I don't know it.
'''E:''' Show me the city or the place on the earth that can handle something like this.


'''S:''' All right.
'''C:''' Exactly.
 
'''E:''' I don't know it.
 
'''S:''' All right. Thanks, Cara.


{{anchor|news_item4}}
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'''S:''' Thanks, Cara. All right guys, this is an interesting news item is some researchers did an analysis of how much carbon could we store in building materials realistically and what could this be have any kind of significant impact on our, you know, net carbon. So the idea is, you know, this is carbon sequestration, right? This, as we spoke about many times, we could reduce our the amount of carbon that we're releasing into the environment, but unless we get it down to 0, we're still going to be increasing the amount of carbon. And further, we're never going to be decreasing it unless we can get it to be negative. The only way to do that is to pull carbon out of the air, out of the environment and then store it in some kind of long term way. It doesn't have to be a permanent permanent, but it should be, you know, hundreds of years at least, right? You want to take it out of circulation. So like growing trees is one way to store carbon. Trees take carbon out of the air and start store it in solid form. But they give that carbon back when they rot or burn or whatever. So that's medium term ish like a long lived tree. Might help for for the target.
'''S:''' All right guys, this is an interesting news item. Researchers did an analysis of how much carbon could we store in building materials, realistically, and could this have any kind of significant impact on our net carbon. So the idea is, this is carbon sequestration, right? We spoke about many times, we could reduce the amount of carbon that we're releasing into the environment, but unless we get it down to 0, we're still going to be increasing the amount of carbon. And further, we're never going to be decreasing it unless we can get it to be negative. The only way to do that is to pull carbon out of the air, out of the environment and then store it in some kind of long term way. It doesn't have to be a permanent permanent, but it should be hundreds of years at least, right? You want to take it out of circulation. So growing trees is one way to store carbon. Trees take carbon out of the air and store it in solid form. But they give that carbon back when they rot or burn or whatever. So that's medium term-ish like a long lived tree might help for the target.


'''E:''' Artificial trees like you know that that won't die. They'll they'll hold the carbon.
'''E:''' Artificial trees that that won't die. They'll hold the carbon.


'''S:''' Yeah, or we or we talked about just burying the trees, you know? Yeah, right.
'''S:''' Yeah, or we talked about just burying the trees, you know?


'''E:''' But but more sequoias.
'''E:''' Yeah, right.


'''S:''' But burying carbon in some form reuses up land. It may have environmental impacts and that there's a lot of logistical issues with that. But what if we could store the carbon in stuff and stuff that we're making anyway that's going to exist anyway? We're not burying it. We're just building stuff out of it.
'''B:''' More sequoias.


'''E:''' Right, as long as it's non disposable, right, so long like you said that lasts the. Long.
'''S:''' But burying carbon in some form uses up land. It may have environmental impacts and there's a lot of logistical issues with that. But what if we could store the carbon in stuff. Stuff that we're making anyway that's going to exist anyway? We're not burying it. We're just building stuff out of it.
 
'''E:''' Right, as long as it's non disposable, right, so long like you said that lasts the long time.


'''S:''' They have to be things that last for a long time.
'''S:''' They have to be things that last for a long time.
'''C:''' Like roads.


'''E:''' Long lifetime.
'''E:''' Long lifetime.


'''S:''' Yeah, Rd. So asphalt is 1, another is concrete, right?
'''S:''' Yeah, road. So asphalt is one, another is concrete, right?


'''E:''' Well. Concrete, yeah, but you have to, you have to make a lot of carbon to make concrete.
'''E:''' Well. Concrete, yeah, but you have to make a lot of carbon to make concrete.


'''S:''' Right, Yeah, that's the whole point. You got to make a lot of carbon and that that's we want to do that. We want to store carbon in these large scale things. Also wood obviously we can what we could do it just by growing trees or by making wood like products and plastics, plastic like stuff you can make out of carbon and brick, you know basically things that are bricks, so cement, asphalt, plastics, wood and brick. So if we took those building materials, how much material do you think that is?
'''S:''' Yeah, that's the whole point. You got to make a lot of carbon and we want to do that. We want to store carbon in these large scale things. Also wood, obviously. What we could do it just by growing trees or by making wood like products. And plastics, plastic like stuff you can make out of carbon and brick, basically things that are bricks, so cement, asphalt, plastics, wood and brick. So if we took those building materials, how much material do you think that is?


'''E:''' You mean in terms of how much carbon it could?
'''E:''' You mean in terms of how much carbon it could?


'''S:''' Have no, no in terms just how much does all that stuff weigh? How many? How many tons of stuff is that per year do we make of concrete, asphalt, plastics, wood and brick?
'''S:''' No, no in terms just how much does all that stuff weigh? How many tons of stuff is that per year do we make of concrete, asphalt, plastics, wood and brick?
 
'''E:''' Holy moly.
 
'''B:''' 4.
 
'''E:''' 4 trillion? I don't know. I have no idea.


'''E:''' Holy moly. 4. 4 trillion? I don't know. I have no idea.
'''S:''' Yeah, couple orders of magnitude about. So is it more than 30 billion.


'''S:''' Yeah, if I couple orders of magnitude about. So is it more than 30 billion?
'''E:''' Thirty billion.


'''E:''' Thirty billion, 30 billion, right.
'''S:''' Thirty billion, right. How much carbon do we release into the atmosphere every year?


'''S:''' How much carbon do we release into the atmosphere every year 4.
'''B:''' 4.


'''E:''' More than 30.
'''E:''' More than 30 billion.


'''S:''' Billion this year, you know, we had a new record 40 billion tons.
'''S:''' This year we had a new record. 40 billion tons.


'''E:''' So.
'''E:''' So-


'''S:''' 40 giga tons. Yeah, so not.
'''S:''' 40 giga tons. Yeah, so-


'''E:''' Good, right?
'''E:''' Not good.


'''S:''' So what if, what if most of that stuff was built out of carbon that we were sequestering?
'''S:''' Right. So what if most of that stuff was built out of carbon that we were sequestering?


'''E:''' That'd be nice.
'''E:''' That'd be nice.


'''S:''' We're on the same order of magnitude as the amount that is being that's being released, you know, of CO2 that's been released. Obviously we want to get that amount down. If we can get that 40 billion tons down to say 10 billion tons or 5 billion tons, you know, obviously the goal is to get to quote UN quote net zero. But that last bit is going to be really hard. Even if we can get down to say to 5 billion tons of carbon that we're releasing every year, but what if we could sequester 10 billion tons right? Then we could actually be net CARB, net carbon negative for a bit until we settle into pre industrial levels or or somewhere between where we are now and pre industrial levels.
'''S:''' We're on the same order of magnitude as the amount that is being released. Of CO2 that's been released. Obviously we want to get that amount down. If we can get that 40 billion tons down to 10 billion tons or 5 billion tons. Obviously the goal is to get to quote unquote net zero. But that last bit is going to be really hard. Even if we can get down to 5 billion tons of carbon that we're releasing every year, but what if we could sequester 10 billion tons, right? Then we could actually be net carbon negative for a bit until we settle into pre industrial levels or somewhere between where we are now and pre industrial levels.


'''E:''' Yeah.
'''E:''' Yeah.


'''S:''' Somewhere before the other, the climate started to go haywire.
'''S:''' Somewhere before the climate started to go haywire.
 
'''B:''' How do we grab all that stuff?


'''B:''' How do we grab? All that stuff. Yeah.
'''E:''' Yeah, how?


'''S:''' So, yeah, so there's a couple of questions here. You know, 1 is how do we get a hold of that carbon in the first place?
'''S:''' Yeah, so there's a couple of questions here. One is how do we get a hold of that carbon in the first place?


'''B:''' Isn't that the the hardest part of this?
'''B:''' Isn't that the the hardest part of this?


'''S:''' Yes, yeah, it is. And the second part is how do we make it into these types of materials Once you do, you know, once you if you could make mostly carbon concrete, which actually is strong, good strong. Yeah, you could if you could make like carbon nano fibers and infuse that into the carbon into the concrete. Actually we've talked about this before. It actually gives you very strong concrete. Same thing what you know, carbon based plastics and are also good and wood is wood, right? You just have, you know, this is the matter of using wood in in a way treating it so that it lasts for hundreds of years, not 10s of years, for example. And brick is rock, you know, so if you just make a brick that has a lot of carbon. So the what the analysis they did was all right. So realistically, given the methods that we have today, if we tried to store as much carbon as possible in these materials, how much could we store? It's obviously not 30 billion because these things are not going to be pure carbon, but they estimated. That it would be 16.6 ± 2.8 billion tons. So, you know, we're talking roughly 1617 billion tons of carbon per year. That's pretty good. That's a lot, yeah.
'''S:''' Yes, yeah, it is. And the second part is how do we make it into these types of materials. Once you do, if you could make mostly carbon concrete, which actually is strong.
 
'''B:''' Sounds strong.
 
'''S:''' If you could make carbon nano fibers and infuse that into the concrete. Actually we've talked about this before. It actually gives you very strong concrete. Same thing what carbon based plastics are, and also good and wood is wood, right? This is the matter of using wood in in a way treating it so that it lasts for hundreds of years, not tens of years, for example. And brick is rock, so you just make a brick that has a lot of carbon. So the what the analysis they did was, realistically, given the methods that we have today, if we tried to store as much carbon as possible in these materials, how much could we store? It's obviously not 30 billion, because these things are not going to be pure carbon, but they estimated that it would be 16.6 ± 2.8 billion tons. So we're talking roughly 16-17 billion tons of carbon per year. That's pretty good.
 
'''B:''' That's a lot.
 
'''S:''' Yeah.


'''E:''' Not insignificant.
'''E:''' Not insignificant.


'''S:''' That's that's about half of the CO2 emissions that we had in 2021. Again, we're higher than that now. So again, if we can, yeah, if we can get down to that, that is significant. That's huge. You know, that would significantly reduce our net carbon and and makes it very plausible that we could get to net negative or net zero at least, right. If we if we got to get down to 10 to 15 billion tons of carbon per year, then then we could do that. So what are some methods for getting the carbon in the 1st place? The easiest method is growing stuff, right? That plants are the most efficient method we have of taking carbon out of the air and putting it into solid form.
'''S:''' That's about half of the CO2 emissions that we had in 2021. Again, we're higher than that now. So again, if we can get down to that, that is significant. That's huge. That would significantly reduce our net carbon and makes it very plausible that we could get to net negative or net zero at least. If we get down to 10 to 15 billion tons of carbon per year, then we could do that. So, what are some methods for getting the carbon in the first place? The easiest method is growing stuff, right? That plants are the most efficient method we have of taking carbon out of the air and putting it into solid form.


'''E:''' Tried and true. You have biotechnology.
'''E:''' Tried and true.


'''S:''' Baby, yeah, but it uses space, right? It uses either land or water to do that. We don't. And as we've discussed many times, like we're pretty much using all of our land to grow food. You know, we, we don't have the amount of like vast tracts of land to, to convert into the, into carbon sequestration, but you could use waste biomass, right? You take all that biomass that is not edible, that is not food, but that would otherwise be waste. And you, you convert that into, you know, carbon that can be used in cement or, or brick or made into plastic or whatever. So that, that's the, those are the processes that they're talking about. Then there are other sources of C of CO2 as well, ash and whatnot that you can use. Now the the the the trickiest one, of course, is like directly pulling CO2 out of the air.
'''B:''' Biotechnology, baby.
 
'''S:''' But it uses space, right? It uses either land or water to do that. And as we've discussed many times, we're pretty much using all of our land to grow food. You know, we don't have the amount of vast tracts of land to convert into carbon sequestration. But you could use waste biomass, right? You take all that biomass that is not edible, that is not food, but that would otherwise be waste. And you convert that into carbon that can be used in cement or brick or made into plastic or whatever. So those are the processes that they're talking about. Then there are other sources of CO2 as well, ash and whatnot that you can use. Now the trickiest one, of course, is like directly pulling CO2 out of the air.


'''B:''' I love that option.
'''B:''' I love that option.


'''S:''' It sounds the sexiest, but of course it uses energy, so it depends on where that energy is coming from. Doesn't you can't burn fossil fuel to to run the process You have to use solar power or wind power or water power or whatever.
'''S:''' It sounds the sexiest, but of course it uses energy, so it depends on where that energy is coming from. You can't burn fossil fuel to run the process. You have to use solar power or wind power or water power or whatever.
 
'''US#03:''' Or nuclear.
 
'''S:''' Power or even nuclear power, but the problem, the problem is doing that to scale, we can do it. You can do it just not to the industrial scale necessary to be really significant. So, but there's a basically we're talking about biomass that that's going to be the primary mechanism of getting carbon into these into this material. So, you know, this is this, again, this is a thought experiment kind of study where they're just doing the math, say, does it, does it add up? Is it feasible? How much what, how much are we talking about here? And the numbers look good. You just got to do it. You know, we have to build the infrastructure and the technology to do this and do it on a massive scale. I do think something like this is going to be necessary. It's going to be extremely hard to get to net 0, and just getting close isn't enough, right? We're still going to be adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. You know, we haven't even turned the corner yet, and we're talking about doing this. We haven't even reduced the amount by which we're increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. That's still going up. But then partly because we are increasing the percentage of our energy that's coming from low CO2 sources, but we're increasing the amount of energy we're using more, right? So, and that's probably going to continue to be the case between now and 20502060 when we're supposed to, you know, hit net zero. That's why, you know, if you look at it, what percentage of our power is from renewable energy by what it's going up, it's great. But we're still burning as much if not more fossil fuel than we ever had because our energy demand is coming up too. So we have to increase renewables and low carbon sources by more than significantly more than we're increasing our energy demand, which probably not going to do with wind and solar alone. That's why we need nuclear. It's just the it's just not going to happen with that it has.


'''US#03:''' To be part of the big part of it. Space nukes, baby. There you go, Bob.
'''B:''' Or nuclear power.


'''S:''' Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Rocket Money.
'''S:''' Or even nuclear power. But the problem is doing that to scale, we can do it. You can do it. Just not to the industrial scale necessary to be really significant. So, but there's a basically we're talking about biomass, that's going to be the primary mechanism of getting carbon into this material. So again, this is a thought experiment kind of study where they're just doing the math, say, does it add up? Is it feasible? How much are we talking about here? And the numbers look good. You just got to do it. You know, we have to build the infrastructure and the technology to do this and do it on a massive scale. I do think something like this is going to be necessary. It's going to be extremely hard to get to net 0, and just getting close isn't enough, right? We're still going to be adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. You know, we haven't even turned the corner yet, and we're talking about doing this. We haven't even reduced the amount by which we're increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. That's still going up. But then partly because we are increasing the percentage of our energy that's coming from low CO2 sources, but we're increasing the amount of energy we're using more, right? And that's probably going to continue to be the case between now and 2050-2060 when we're supposed to hit net zero. That's why if you look at it, what percentage of our power is from renewable energy? It's going up, it's great. But we're still burning as much if not more fossil fuel than we ever had because our energy demand is coming up too. So we have to increase renewables and low carbon sources significantly more than we're increasing our energy demand, which probably not going to do with wind and solar alone. That's why we need nuclear. It's just not going to happen without nuclear.


'''J:''' Guys, you can use Rocket Money to help you get control of your monthly expenses. You'll see all of your subscriptions in one place, and if you want to cancel any of them, they'll help you do it. You can also see all of your spending across all of your different accounts, so you can keep track of your spending habits and help you figure out what changes you want to make.
'''E:''' It has to be the big part of it.


'''E:''' Yeah, so Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitor your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the apps premium features.
'''B:''' Space nukes, baby.


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'''E:''' There you go, Bob.


'''S:''' All right, guys, let's get back to the show.
{{anchor|wtn}}
{{anchor|wtn}}
{{anchor|futureWTN}}
{{anchor|futureWTN}}
== Who's That Noisy? + Announcements <small>(1:05:31)</small> ==
== Who's That Noisy? + Announcements <small>(1:05:31)</small> ==


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


'''J:''' All right guys, last week I played this noisy. All right, well, while you're trying to figure out what the hell that is, I did get some people guessing. A listener named Beth Urlacher said. Hi Jay. My 10 year old son Aiden wanted to guess this week's noisy, he thinks. And it's an old excavator toy that that talks. Oh, then she gave me the pronunciation. It's Earl Locker. Earl Locker Stavis Maples said this week's noisy is someone trying to start a truck. This was most likely be correct in some way. Another person visto tutti this noisy is is bizarre. I can only think that it it's the sound of a Japanese vending machine with synthesized voice. I don't hear that anything like that in there. That's a very interesting guess. Michael Blaney wrote in and said hi Jay. Hmm, it's kind of it kind of reminds me of when I turn off my handheld vacuum cleaner. The powering down of the motor makes a really weird sci-fi like recharge sound. So I guess that's my guess. It's a small electric motor powering down and then the final guest was from evil eye, a pull string toy like the old farmer says thing and the spring inside breaking or recoiling inside. It had the dial on the outside that pointed to the to the animal. I used to love that.
'''J:''' All right guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] All right, well, while you're trying to figure out what the hell that is, I did get some people guessing. A listener named Beth Urlacher said. Hi Jay, my 10 year old son Aiden wanted to guess this week's noisy, he thinks it's an old excavator toy that that talks. Oh, then she gave me the pronunciation. It's Earl Locker. Earl Locker. Stavis Maples said this week's noisy is someone trying to start a truck. This was most likely be correct in some way. Another person Visto Tutti, this noisy is is bizarre. I can only think that it's the sound of a Japanese vending machine with synthesized voice. I don't hear that anything like that in there. That's a very interesting guess. Michael Blaney wrote in and said Hi Jay, hmm, it's kind of reminds me of when I turn off my handheld vacuum cleaner. The powering down of the motor makes a really weird sci-fi like recharge sound. So I guess that's my guess. It's a small electric motor powering down. And then the final guess was from EvilEye, a pull string toy like the old farmer says thing and the spring inside breaking or recoiling inside. It had the dial on the outside that pointed to the to the animal. I used to love that.


'''E:''' Oh yeah.
'''E:''' Oh yeah.


'''J:''' I get that all right. No guess on this one, guys, and this was, I knew that this one was very hard, but it's a cool sound. I'll play it again, see if this stirs anything in any of you guys. All right, let let me walk you through it. What's the first thing that you hear?
'''J:''' I get that. No guess on this one, guys, and this was, I knew that this one was very hard, but it's a cool sound. I'll play it again, see if this stirs anything in any of you guys. [plays Noisy] All right, let me walk you through it. What's the first thing that you hear?


'''US#03:''' Scratchy, scratchy thing.
'''B:''' Scratching?


'''J:''' All right, listen again. A bird.
'''E:''' Some scratchy thing.
 
'''J:''' All right, listen again.


'''C:''' Birds.
'''C:''' Birds.


'''J:''' What's that? That whooshy sound? Try again. Forget, forget the tweaking the the birds and stuff. What's the whooshy sound?
'''J:''' What's that whooshy sound? Try again. Forget the tweaking the birds and stuff. What's the whooshy sound?


'''US#03:''' Snow like someone's scraping something like somebody. Rotating around and all.
'''E:''' Snow, like someone's scraping something.


'''J:''' Right, I'll tell you what it is. Listen again.
'''B:''' Something rotating around.


'''US#03:''' Tell me.
'''J:''' All right, I'll tell you what it is. Listen again.


'''J:''' All right, That's fire.
'''B:''' Tell me.


'''US#03:''' Fire.
'''J:''' All right, that's fire.
 
'''E:''' Fire?


'''J:''' OK.
'''J:''' OK.
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'''C:''' Doesn't sound like fire.
'''C:''' Doesn't sound like fire.


'''J:''' Now listen again to the whole thing. All right, What's the high pitched noise?
'''J:''' Now listen again to the whole thing. All right, what's the high pitched noise?


'''C:''' A child.
'''C:''' A child?


'''J:''' A child sounds like.
'''J:''' A child. ''(chuckles)''


'''C:''' Somebody going?
'''C:''' Sounds like somebody going haaa.


'''J:''' Yeah, it does. All right. So sound a little human, but. You may have seen a video of the.
'''B:''' Yeah, it does.
 
'''J:''' All right.
 
'''B:''' Sounds a little human, but-
 
'''J:''' You may have seen a video of the-


'''C:''' Fireplace like the Huihu Huihu things.
'''C:''' Fireplace like the Huihu Huihu things.
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'''J:''' No.
'''J:''' No.


'''B:''' Gas in the wood burning. That was.
'''B:''' Gas in the wood burning?


'''J:''' No, that was last week.
'''J:''' No, that was last week.
Line 430: Line 483:
'''B:''' Thought it sounded familiar.
'''B:''' Thought it sounded familiar.


'''J:''' OK, so I've seen videos of people doing this many, many times. It's pretty interesting. What they do is they'll use fuels, some kind of fuel to re inflate a flat tire, right? So they're lighting the fuel, it catches on fire it, you know, the fuel like goes inside the tire and then, you know, the gas that it produces expands really fast and it actually can take a completely flat and even almost, you know, a tire that's not completely touching the rim and it'll re inflate it.
'''J:''' OK, so I've seen videos of people doing this many, many times. It's pretty interesting. What they do is they'll use fuels, some kind of fuel to re-inflate a flat tire, right? So they're lighting the fuel, it catches on fire it the fuel goes inside the tire and then the gas that it produces expands really fast and it actually can take a completely flat and even almost a tire that's not completely touching the rim and it'll re inflate it.


'''E:''' I've seen videos of that. It's pretty incredible.
'''E:''' I've seen videos of that. It's pretty incredible.


'''J:''' Yeah, and it and it grips the the the rim again looks dangerous.
'''J:''' Yeah, and it and it grips the the the rim again.


'''E:''' Oh yeah.
'''E:''' Looks dangerous.
 
'''B:''' Oh yeah.
 
'''J:''' I bet you there's lots of ways that that can go wrong. So it's really cool. You could definitely look this up. If you've never seen it, I really suggest that you do it because it is a a pretty impressive thing. Here it is one last time. [plays Noisy]
 
'''E:''' I would have never guessed that sound was that.
 
'''B:''' Still not seeing it but OK.


'''J:''' I I bet you there's lots of ways that that can go wrong. So it's really cool. You could definitely look this up. If you've never seen it, I really suggest that you do it because it is a a pretty impressive thing. Here it is one last time. Yeah.
'''J:''' So that that ping noise, that high pitched ping noise is the actual air expanding inside the wheel well and then the tire re-gripping onto the rim. Very cool. And no winner. I knew it was hard, but I think it's an instructional who's that noisy. Because it's something you can learn about. A listener named Corey Hawes sent in this new Noisy. And I hope you guys like it. [plays Noisy] If you guys think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, e-mail me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.


'''E:''' So that would have never. Guessed that sound was that. Still not seeing it but OK.


'''J:''' So that that ping noise, that high pitched ping noise is the is the actual air expanding inside the wheel well and then the the tire re gripping onto the rim. Very cool and no, no winner. So you know, I knew it was hard, but I think it's a it's an instructional who's that noisy? Because it's it's something you can learn about. A listener named Corey Hawes sent in this new nausea. And I hope you guys like it. If you guys think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, e-mail me at WTN at the skepticsguideorg. Few quick repeat announcements here. Nauticon 2025. It's going to be awesome. We talk about it all the time because we we went to the last one and we all loved it. It was. It was highly regaled as as the absolute best thing that Steven Novella has ever done over the course of 2 1/2 days, and Steve's lack of response is proof of that.
'''J:''' Few quick repeat announcements here. NOTACON 2025. It's going to be awesome. We talk about it all the time because we went to the last one and we all loved it. It was highly regaled as the absolute best thing that Steven Novella has ever done over the course of 2 1/2 days, and Steve's lack of response is proof of that.


'''C:''' I think he was only there 1 1/2 days, wasn't he? That's. Right.
'''C:''' I think he was only there 1 1/2 days, wasn't he?


'''E:''' But it.
'''E:''' That's right, yeah.


'''J:''' Was an intense 1 1/2 days now he came two hours late and we we busted two hours mercilessly.
'''J:''' It was an intense 1 1/2 days. No, he came two hours late and we busted two hours mercilessly.


'''C:''' Yeah, we did. We rewrote history.
'''C:''' Yeah, we did. We rewrote history.


'''E:''' Critical Two hours.
'''E:''' Critical two hours.


'''J:''' Let me tell you, when Steve walked in late after I busted his stones for two hours, Yep, He walks in, everybody looks at him and starts laughing right in his face.
'''J:''' Let me tell you, when Steve walked in late after I busted his stones for two hours. He walks in, everybody looks at him and starts laughing right in his face. It was awesome. It was awesome.
 
'''E:''' It was awesome. It was awesome.


'''J:''' And then Steve gets this nervous smile on his face like. Oh, what did I?
'''J:''' And then Steve gets this nervous smile on his face like. Oh, what did I?


'''E:''' Yeah. Why did I walk in? What did I walk into or what did Jay do?
'''E:''' Why did I walk in? What did I walk into or what did Jay do?


'''J:''' Anyway, please join us to Nauticon 2025. We have a Beatles theme this year. We will definitely be doing a Beatles sing along on Saturday night led by George Robb. There will be lots of surprises during that sing along, so please do consider coming. You can talk to people on the SGU Discord if you're interested. If you're looking for a roommate or share a ride, go to nadaconcon.com or go to theskepticsguide.org and there's a link to it on our homepage. You could join the SGU mailing list, Go to the SGU homepage for that. Every week we give a list of everything that we've done the previous week, and it's definitely worth getting because there's some humor in there and the word of the week and lots of other pieces of information that you might like. So please consider joining our mailing list. Please give us a a show rating on whatever podcast player you're using. This helps new people find our podcast. And last but not least, please consider becoming an SGU patron. You could do this by going to patreon.com/skeptics Guide. It's pretty damn obvious why it's more important now than ever in the past 20 years of the SGU, so if you're interested in helping us out in in any way in this, it could be a dollar a month. Any any contribution would help. Go to patreon.com/skeptics guide.
'''J:''' Anyway, please join us to NOTACON 2025. We have a Beatles theme this year. We will definitely be doing a Beatles sing along on Saturday night led by George Hrab. There will be lots of surprises during that sing along, so please do consider coming. You can talk to people on the SGU Discord if you're interested. If you're looking for a roommate or share a ride, go to [https://notaconcon.com/ notaconcon.com] or go to [https://www.theskepticsguide.org/ theskepticsguide.org] and there's a link to it on our homepage. You could join the SGU mailing list, go to the SGU homepage for that. Every week we give a list of everything that we've done the previous week, and it's definitely worth getting because there's some humor in there and the word of the week and lots of other pieces of information that you might like. So please consider joining our mailing list. Please give us a show rating on whatever podcast player you're using. This helps new people find our podcast. And last but not least, please consider becoming an SGU patron. You could do this by going to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide]. It's pretty damn obvious why it's more important now than ever in the past 20 years of the SGU, so if you're interested in helping us out in in any way in this, it could be a dollar a month. Any contribution would help. Go to [https://www.patreon.com/SkepticsGuide patreon.com/SkepticsGuide].


'''S:''' Thank you, Jay. Well, we have a great interview coming up with Nick Tiller.
'''S:''' Thank you, Jay. Well, we have a great interview coming up with Nick Tiller. So let's go to that interview now.
{{anchor|interview}}
{{anchor|interview}}
== Interview with Nick Tiller <small>(1:12:29)</small> ==
== Interview with Nick Tiller <small>(1:12:29)</small> ==
https://www.nbtiller.com/
https://www.nbtiller.com/


'''S:''' So let's go to that interview now. We are joined now by Doctor Nick Tiller. Nick, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.
'''S:''' We are joined now by Doctor Nick Tiller. Nick, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.
 
'''Nick Tiller:''' Hi, it's great to be talking to you guys. Very excited. A long time listener to the show so I'm super excited to be chatting with you all.


'''US#00:''' Hi, it's great to be talking to you guys. Very excited. A long time listener to the show so I'm super excited to be chatting with you all.
'''S:''' Thanks. So Nick, you are an exercise scientist and a science communicator promoting sort of critical thinking in the exercise in sports medicine realm. We actually met when we were at CSICon and you and I had a little bit of overlap in our time in Dubai recently. So I did get to eat you in person. Yeah, that was nice. We had wonderful food, though, that that restaurant. I mean, it was.


'''S:''' Thanks. So Nick, you are an exercise scientist and a science communicator promoting sort of critical thinking in the exercise in sports medicine realm. We actually met when we were at Saccon and you and I had a little bit of overlap in our time in Dubai recently. So I did get to eat you in person. Yeah, that was nice. We had wonderful food, though, that that restaurant. I mean, it was.
'''Nick Tiller:''' We had some great food there.


'''US#00:''' We had some great food there. Yeah, it.
'''S:''' Yeah, it was really good. I love Middle Eastern food, but it's like, it's like saying I like European food, you know what I mean? Like it's, there's so many different kinds.


'''S:''' Was really good. I love Middle Eastern food, but it's like, it's like saying I like European Food, you know what I mean? Like it's, there's so many different kinds. Europeans and.
'''Nick Tiller:''' Actually just just on that trip to Dubai Steve and I were out there and I think Steve, you and I had very similar experiences with this group. You know, this group of sort of young entrepreneurs CEOs and we were talking about critical thinking and I was talking more about critical thinking overlapping with exercise science. And they were such a fantastic group, just so tuned in. So they were asking so many fantastic astute questions and there's a three hour workshop and they were absolutely clued in from the first slide to the last slide. That was a really pleasurable experience for me.


'''US#00:''' Actually, you know, just just on that, on that trip to Dubai, you know, Steve and I were out there and I think Steve, you and I had very similar experiences with this group. You know, this group of sort of young entrepreneurs CE OS and you know, we were, we were talking about critical thinking and I was talking more about critical thinking overlapping with exercise science. And they were, they were such a, a fantastic group, just so tuned in. So they were asking so many fantastic astute questions and when I whenever I running a there's a three hour workshop and they were absolutely clued in from the first slide to the last slide that that was a really pleasurable experience for me.
'''S:''' Yeah, they were like the perfect audience because as you said, they were very engaged, very smart, very clued in, but were completely naive to the whole critical thinking angle, you know what I mean? So like, it was all new to them, pretty much. So, yeah, very receptive, great questions. But I could tell them anything from my third past 30 years of skepticism, and they never heard it before. So let's talk about the work that you've been doing. You've published a book called The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Medicine. Tell us about that. What topics do you cover in that book?


'''S:''' Yeah, they were like the perfect audience because as you said, they were very engaged, very smart, very clued in, but were completely naive to the whole critical thinking angle, you know what I mean? So like, it was all new to them, pretty much So, yeah. Very receptive, Great questions. But I could tell them anything from my third past 30 years of skepticism, and they never heard it before. So let's talk about the work that you've been doing. You've published a book called The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Medicine. Tell us about that. What topics do you cover in that book?
'''Nick Tiller:''' Yeah, well, I hasten to add that the title is really-I named it in tribute to the SGU and I wrote about in the introduction to the book how I found the SGU and you guys acted as my gateway into scientific skepticism and critical thinking. And I came up with the idea for the book when I was doing my PhD. This was back in 2011. My PhD was focused on human applied Physiology with a specialism in respiratory medicine and I was a poor, broke student at the time. And so to make ends meet, I started to write for mainstream science outlets and I wrote two articles. One was the follow up to the second and they were called Myths and Fallacies of Sports Science Part 1 and Part 2. And I just thought this is something that I'm interested in. It combines my personal passion for scientific scepticism with my professional work in applied exercise Physiology, and I got really positive feedback from that. And it occurred to me that nobody's really doing this. Nobody is trying to bridge the gap, this huge void between critical thinking and exercise science or health and fitness more broadly. And that was sort of the, I guess that was sowing the seeds of the book. And then about eight years later, the Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science was published. And so that's essentially what I tried to do. That is the book's thesis is to bridge the gap between critical thinking and exercise science. There's a big golf there. It's there's a lot of work that needs to be done.


'''US#00:''' Yeah, well, I hasten to add that the title is really. I named it in tribute to the SDU and I wrote about in the introduction to the book how I found the SDU and you guys acted as my gateway into scientific skepticism and critical thinking. And I came up with the idea for the book when I was doing my PhD. This was back in 2011. My PhD was focused on on human applied Physiology with a specialism in respiratory medicine and to I was a poor, broke student at the time. And so to make ends meet, I started to write for mainstream science outlets and I wrote two articles. They were, they were, one was the follow up to the second and it was and it they were called Myths and Fallacies of Sports Science Part 1 and Part 2. And I just thought this is something that I'm interested in. It combines my personal passion for scientific scepticism with my professional work in applied exercise Physiology, and I got really positive feedback from that. And it occurred to me that nobody's really doing this. Nobody is trying to bridge the gap, this huge void between critical thinking and exercise science or health and fitness more broadly. And that was sort of the, the, I guess that was sowing the seeds of the book. And then about eight years later, the skeptic Sky Sports Science was published. And, and so that's essentially what I tried to do. That is the book's thesis is to bridge the gap between critical thinking and exercise science, which is it's a, there's a big golf there. It's there's a lot of work that needs to be done.
'''S:''' Yeah, it's not just like a lack of critical thinking. There's an active industry of misinformation in the wellness, exercise, dieting space that we're confronting. It's not just how people don't really understand. They're being lied to. They're being given misinformation. So tell what's the biggest kind of misinformation you encounter in that area?


'''S:''' Yeah, it's not just like a lack of critical thinking. There's an active industry of misinformation right in the Wellness, exercise, dieting space that we're confronting. It's not just how people don't really understand. It's like they're being lied to. They're being given misinformation. So tell what's the biggest, what's the biggest kind of misinformation you encounter in in that area?
'''Nick Tiller:''' Well, I think very specifically I guess it's about, I think nutrition is one of those areas that everybody thinks is very important because it is. And everybody thinks that they know a little bit about nutrition. But actually it's probably one of those areas that is most misunderstood and mostly misappropriated as well. Because under nutrition you have fad diets, you have dietary supplements, you have performance enhancing supplements as well. And so that's a huge can of worms. But I think speaking more broadly, the entire health and wellness industry hinges on this idea that there is some kind of quick fix, there is some kind of shortcut, there is some magic equation that we have to unlock. The number of times that I've been asked, Nick, what what's the secret to being in shape? What's the secret to health, to true health and wellness and it's like, well, how do you even it's like asking Evan, like Evan, how do you do your taxes? It's like, what do you what you want me to summarize that in a thirty second sound bite? I mean, it's complicated, but inevitably when you say to people, look, that the secret is that there is no secret. You have to eat well, don't drink, don't smoke and exercise every day. I mean, that's the secret equation. But of course, we are primed in health and wellness to want a quick fix, some kind of magic supplement, a special exercise program. You know, they want me to tell them that if they eat grapefruits every day, they'll lose weight. Or they just do an ice plunge every day and it'll boost your immune system. But the human body is a little bit more complicated than that, unfortunately.


'''US#00:''' Well, I, I, I think very specifically I, I guess it's about, I think nutrition is one of those areas that everybody likes to, everybody thinks is very important because it is. And everybody thinks that they know a little bit about nutrition. But actually it's probably one of those areas that is most misunderstood and mostly misappropriated as well. Because under nutrition you have fad diets, you have dietary supplements, you have performance enhancing supplements as well. And so that's, that's a huge can of worms. But I think speaking more broadly, the, the entire health and Wellness industry hinges on this idea that there is some kind of quick fix, there is some kind of shortcut, There is some magic equation that we have to unlock the, the number of times that I've been asked, Nick, what what's the secret to being in shape? What's the secret to health, to true health and Wellness, you know, and it's like, well, how do you even it's like asking Evan, like Evan, how do you do your taxes? It's like, what do you what you want me to you want me to summarize that in a 32nd sound bite? I mean, it's, it's complicated, but inevitably when you say to people, look, that the secret is that there is no secret. You have to eat well, don't drink, don't smoke and exercise every day. I mean, that that's, that's the secret equation. But of course, we are primed in health and Wellness to want a quick fix, some kind of magic supplement, a special exercise program. You know, they want me to tell them that if they eat grapefruits every day, they'll lose weight. Or, you know, they just do an ice plunge every day and, and it'll boost your immune system. But the human body is a little bit more complicated than that, unfortunately.
'''B:''' Yeah, there's no nothing quick. It's just hard work and consistency. In my experience, though, if you don't have two of those, especially consistency, that's when I've seen some of my biggest gains throughout my life is like when you could stick with it. Find something you enjoy, even if it's not the optimal, like this is the best cardio that you could possibly do. It's the most efficient. It doesn't matter. Because if it's the most efficient and best for you, but you don't do it, then it's not helpful at all. But if it's something that's like maybe not as awesomely efficient as cross country skiing or something like that, but it's something that you enjoy, you're going to stick with it and just do something that you enjoy that moves your body. If the studies have showed anything, it's like you don't have to do a lot. It doesn't take that much to have a noticeable benefit to your health. Just move around.


'''B:''' Yeah, it's, it's often, Yeah. There's no nothing quick. It's just, it's just hard work and consistency. In my experience, though, if you don't have two of those, especially consistency, that's when I've seen some of my biggest gains throughout my life is like when you could stick with it. Find something you enjoy, even if it's not the optimal, like this is the best cardio that you could possibly do. It's the most efficient. It doesn't matter. Because if if it's the most efficient and best for you, but you don't do it, then it's not helpful at all. But if it's something that's like, you know, maybe not as as, as awesomely efficient as cross country skiing or something like that, but it's something that you enjoy, you're going to stick with it and just do something that you enjoy that moves your body. If, if the studies have showed anything, it's like you don't have to do a lot. It doesn't take that much to, you know, to, to have a, a noticeable benefit to your, to your health. Just be move around.
'''Nick Tiller:''' I couldn't agree more. It's adherence, everything, it comes down to adherence and and if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to adhere to it. You know, some people try going to the gym and they hate going to the gym. OK, well, don't go to the gym. You know, some people try and go running and they hate it. OK. Just it doesn't matter what you do, just move. The more you move, the better. And once you start seeing those benefits, whether they're cardiovascular benefits or people are losing weight or they're getting stronger. Whatever it happens to be, you'll be motivated to continue once you start seeing benefits. But yeah, you're not going to keep doing it unless you enjoy it. So enjoyment is the key there.


'''US#00:''' I couldn't agree more. It's adherence, everything, it comes down to adherence and and if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to adhere to it. You know, some people try going to the gym and they hate going to the gym. OK, well, don't go to the gym. You know, some people try and go running and they hate it. OK. Just it doesn't matter what you do, just move. The more you move, the better. And once you start seeing those benefits, whether they're cardiovascular benefits or people are losing weight or, you know, they're they're getting stronger, whatever, whatever it happens to be, you'll be motivated to continue once you start seeing benefits. But yeah, it's just if you're not going to, you're not going to keep doing it unless you enjoy it. So enjoyment is the key there.
'''E:''' Nick, only because you mentioned it, you said ice baths and I was going to bring up Wim Hof to see if you've done research in regards to him. You know, Dutch extreme athlete famous for his ability to withstand extreme coal and he has some a method that he I guess sells to people. If you follow his routine, it will lead you to better results. Any truth to this?


'''E:''' Nick, only because you mentioned it, you said ice baths and I was going to bring up Wim Hof to see if you've done research in regards to him. You know, Dutch extreme athlete famous for his ability to withstand extreme coal and he has some a method that he I guess sells to people. If you follow his routine, it will lead you to better results. Any, any any truth to this?
'''Nick Tiller:''' Well, generally speaking, most people will engage in some kind of like ice bathing or ice dunking or some kind of cold water immersion, not just because they think that it's going to improve their recovery or boost their immune system, but because it fits into a lifestyle, right? And most of the time in health and wellness, you're very rarely selling somebody what a particular product, you're selling them a lifestyle, you're selling them a way to shape their own personal identity. So that's kind of the best way that I can describe Wim Hofer's. In most cases, it's not going to do harm. There are going to be some instances where people, they have some kind of pre-existing cardiovascular disease that they didn't know about. Maybe they shouldn't be ice dunking and cold shock is a real thing so there's always this risk of overt harm. But most people use ice bathing because it's entrenched in the exercise culture and definitely sporting culture. People think that it's actually facilitates recovery. And it all comes back to this idea that when you have an injury that you should stick ice on the injury because it reduces the inflammation. That in itself has been contested a bunch of times because inflammation isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to repairing an injury. But you know, there's more and more research now that shows with ice bathing specifically that it, if anything, it actually inhibits recovery. It actually suppresses muscle protein synthesis and it suppresses anabolic signalling in the muscle. So if you have like a hard workout, if you're especially if you're an athlete, and then you go and sit in a cold tub or an ice bath for 10 minutes, it's actually going to slow your rate of recovery. So contrary to popular belief, but this is an activity now that is so entrenched in sport and exercise culture that I don't think any amount of evidence is ever going to change that, unfortunately.


'''US#00:''' Well, generally speaking, most people will engage in some kind of like ice bathing or ice dunking or, or some kind of cold water immersion, not just because they think that it's going to improve their recovery or boost their immune system, but because it, it, it fits into a lifestyle, right? And most of the time in health and Wellness, you're very rarely selling somebody what a particular product, you're selling them a lifestyle, you're selling them a way to shape their own personal identity. So that's kind of the best way that I can describe Wim Hofers. In, in most cases, it's not going to do, do harm. There are going to be some instances where people, you know, they have some kind of pre-existing cardiovascular disease that they didn't know about. Maybe they shouldn't be ice dunking and cold shock is a real thing, you know, so there's, there's always this risk of, of overt harm. But most people use ice bathing because it's entrenched in the exercise culture and definitely sporting culture. People think that it's actually facilitates recovery. And it all comes back to this idea that, you know, when you have an injury that you should stick ice on the injury because it reduces the inflammation. And that there's, you know, that in itself has been contested a bunch of times because, you know, inflammation isn't necessarily a, a bad thing when it comes to when it comes to repairing an injury. But you know, there's more and more research now that shows with ice bathing specifically that it, if anything, it actually inhibits recovery. It actually suppresses muscle protein synthesis and it suppresses anabolic signalling in the muscle. So if you have like a hard workout, if you're especially if you're an athlete, and then you go and sit in a cold tub or an ice bath for 10 minutes, it's actually going to slow your rate of recovery. So contrary to popular belief, but this is a, is a, an activity now that is so entrenched in sport and exercise culture that I, I don't think any amount of evidence is ever going to change that, unfortunately. Yeah, I agree.
'''E:''' Yeah, I agree.


'''J:''' Isn't that ironic, right? It's like the exact opposite. So you said it slows it down, but eventually the the same level of recovery will be achieved, right?
'''J:''' Isn't that ironic, right? It's like the exact opposite. So you said it slows it down, but eventually the the same level of recovery will be achieved, right?


'''US#00:''' Right. Yeah, I, I think, I think I understand the question. You mean like if you wait for long enough, then you'll, you'll recover back to baseline level? Well, yes and no. Because you think if somebody's exercising regularly, they might be, especially if they're a, a high performance athlete, they might be training twice a day, three times a day. And actually if they're blunting the rate at which they recover after each training session, that could have cumulative effects on recovery. So there's nothing to say that actually they'll rebound back to baseline levels. Ice bathing if if you're if you're interested in repairing the muscle tissue after hard exercise, hard training, then definitely don't go on ice bath. And it's, you know, unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg, pun intended, because a lot of people say that we should be using ice baths to boost immunity and because it promotes healing and it, you know, protects from cancer and it and it can protect you from COVID-19. I mean, if you can think it, people, people will make, we'll make those claims.
'''Nick Tiller:''' Right. Yeah, I think I understand the question. You mean like if you wait for long enough, then you'll recover back to baseline level? Well, yes and no. Because you think if somebody's exercising regularly, especially if they're a high performance athlete, they might be training twice a day, three times a day. And actually if they're blunting the rate at which they recover after each training session, that could have cumulative effects on recovery. So there's nothing to say that actually they'll rebound back to baseline levels. Ice bathing, if you're interested in repairing the muscle tissue after hard exercise, hard training, then definitely don't go on ice bath. And it's unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg, pun intended, because a lot of people say that we should be using ice baths to boost immunity and because it promotes healing and it protects from cancer and it and it can protect you from COVID-19. I mean, if you can think it, people will make those claims.
 
'''S:''' It says on your website, you have a couple other books coming out, one called The Health and Wellness Lie. And we talked a little bit about this when we were together, like wellness, like the whole idea of wellness basically is a scam, like the entire industry. So tell us about some of the things that you've you've confronted in the wellness industry that that gets you going the most.


'''S:''' You have a, it says on your website, you have a couple other books coming out, one called The Health and Wellness Lie. And we talked a little bit about this when we were together, like Wellness, like the whole idea of Wellness basically is a scam, like the entire industry. So tell us about some of the things that you've you've confronted in the Wellness industry that that gets you going the most.
'''Nick Tiller:''' Yeah, thanks for bringing up the book. So this, this hopefully will be published early next year and it's going to be published in the US with John Hopkins University Press in the UK and Europe with a Bloomsbury publishing of Harry Potter fame. And the Health and Wellness lies. Basically, it's a thesis on this idea that everything we know, everything we think we know about health and wellness has basically been dictated to us by an industry that doesn't actually care for our health or our wellness. So that could be the fact that when somebody wants to lose weight, they go on a fad diet and what happens? They lose a little bit of weight in the opening weeks or months of the diet. The thing isn't sustainable in the long term. Inevitably, they regain all of the weight that they've lost. 1/3 of people that follow a fad diet actually gain more weight than they originally lost. So they end up weighing more than they did at the start. And then they just bounce from one fad diet to the next, engaging in what we call yo-yo dieting. And it has really negative long term effects on cardiovascular health. When people want to improve their immune function, they'll start taking supplements. When people want to improve their recovery, they'll have cupping and they'll have acupuncture and they'll do ice bathing and they'll do all this stuff because that's what they think they need to do because that's what's been dictated to them by the industry. So it's really an expose of the health and wellness industry, the incentives underpinning the industry and teaching people, making sure that there's a thread of critical thinking in there. I don't want to be too heavy-handed with the critical thinking stuff because there are people already doing that. You know, you guys obviously are at the top of the pile here. But making sure that if people do have health and wellness goals, that they have a pretty good idea about how to accomplish those. So how to make good decisions and health and wellness and navigate this the Wild West of wellness without getting ripped off essentially.


'''US#00:''' Yeah, thanks for bringing up the book. So this, this hopefully will be published early next year and it's going to be published in the US with John Hopkins University Press in the UK and Europe with a Bloomsbury publishing of, of Harry Potter fame. And this the, the, the health and Wellness lies. Basically, it's a, it's a thesis on this idea that everything we know, everything we think we know about health and Wellness has basically been dictated to us by an industry that doesn't actually care for our health or our Wellness. So, you know, that could be the, the fact that it, it, when somebody wants to lose weight, they go on a fad diet and what happens? They lose a little bit of weight in the opening weeks or months of the diet. The thing isn't sustainable in the long term. Inevitably, they, they regain all of the weight that they've lost. 1/3 of people that follow a fad diet actually gain more weight than they originally lost. So they end up weighing more than they did at the start. And then they just bounce from 1 fad diet to the next, engaging in what we call yo-yo dieting. And it has really negative long term effects on cardiovascular health. They're, they're when people want to improve their immune function, they'll start taking supplements. When people want to improve their recovery, they'll have cupping and they'll have acupuncture and they'll do ice bathing and they'll do all this stuff because that's what they think they need to do because that's what's been dictated to them by the industry. So it's really an expose of the health and Wellness industry, the incentives underpinning the industry and teaching people, you know, making sure that there's a thread of critical thinking in there. I don't, I don't want to be too heavy-handed with the critical thinking stuff because there are people already doing that. You know, you guys obviously are at the top of the pile here. And but making sure that when if people do have health and Wellness goals, that they have a pretty good idea about how to accomplish those. So how to make good decisions and health and Wellness and, and navigate this the Wild West of Wellness without getting ripped off essentially.
'''J:''' You know, that makes me think that they throw a lot of ideas at the wall and then whichever ones seem to be popular or gaining popularity, then they just lean into it, right? This because this whole idea about using cold as a after workout treatment, the fact that there is no real science behind it means it's all hype. And that is the trend because I think in the end it's all about making money and having something to talk about.


'''J:''' You know, that makes me think that, you know, they throw a lot of ideas at the wall and then whichever ones you know, seem to be popular or gaining popularity, then they just lean into it, right? This because this whole idea about using cold as a after workout treatment, the fact that there is no real science behind it means it's all hype. And that's that is the trend because I think in the end it's all about making money and having something to talk.
'''Nick Tiller:''' Yeah, I couldn't agree more. At the end of the day, this is a business. The health and wellness industry is worth over $4 trillion worldwide, right? That's more than the smartphone industry, the fast food industry and all social media platforms combined, right? In fact, it's worth double all of those entities combined. So this is big business and the reason that it's worth so much money is because everybody is interested in health and wellness at some level. And as you said, whatever is trending at the time, people will lean into and the people who operate within the health and wellness industry are interested in one thing and that's making money, that's profits. And whether that's manufacturers, whether that's vendors who are selling the products, whether it's wellness gurus and fitness influencers online, they're more than happy to sell their followers quick fixes and supplements and diets and core training programs and garments and sneakers and powders, pills and potions, because it promotes engagement. And once they get engagement on something, it can be monetized. So it really does all come back to the bottom line. It's about making money, but that doesn't help the end user who actually wants to lose weight to reduce the their risk of cardiovascular disease or they want to improve their cardiovascular fitness or they want to reduce their back pain or whatever their health and wellness goals happen to be. So it really is an industry that has prioritised profits above the outcomes for the end user. And that's something that I don't think we'll ever reverse it, but at least we can, I'm trying to do my bit at least to help the consumers to actually make good decisions for themselves. They need to act as their own content regulators because nobody's going to do it for them, right?


'''US#00:''' About yeah, I, I couldn't agree more that look at the at the end of the day, this is a business. The health and Wellness industry is worth over $4 trillion worldwide, right? That that's more than the smartphone industry, the fast food industry and all social media platforms combined, right? In fact, it's it's it's worth double all of those entities combined. So this is big business and the reason that it's worth so much money is because everybody is interested in health and Wellness at some level. And as as you said, whatever, whatever is trending at the time, people will lean into and the, the people who operate within the health and Wellness industry are interested in one thing and that's making money, that's profits. And whether that's manufacturers, whether that's vendors who are selling the products, whether it's Wellness gurus and fitness influencers online, they're more than happy to sell their followers quick fixes and supplements and diets and core training programs and garments and sneakers and powders, pills and potions, because it promotes engagement. And once they get engagement on something, it can be monetized. So it really does all come back to the bottom line. It's about making money, but that doesn't help the end user who actually wants to lose weight to reduce the their risk of cardiovascular disease or they want to improve their cardiovascular fitness or they want to reduce their back pain or, you know, whatever their health and Wellness goals happen to be. So it really, it really is an industry that that has prioritised profits above the the outcomes for the end user. And that's something that I don't think we'll ever reverse it, but at least we can. I'm trying to do my bit at least to help the the consumers to actually make good decisions for themselves. They need to act as their own content regulators because nobody's going to do it for them, right?
'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely. That's the world we're living in now. And in my personal assessment, about 99% of that industry ranges somewhere between worthless and harmful. Like you have like this massive industry that's doing nothing for anybody except enriching the snake oil salesman, right? I mean, how many diet books actually are giving people good advice versus honestly, like what most people need to know about their diet you could put in a pamphlet and that's probably all people have the bandwidth for it anyway. And yet there's like, how many books have been written about it, just with utter nonsense.


'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely. That's the world we're living in now. And I mean, I in my personal assessment, about 99% of that industry ranges somewhere between worthless and harmful. Like you have like this massive industry that's doing nothing for for anybody except enriching the snake oil salesman, right? I mean, how many diet books actually are giving people good advice versus, you know, honestly, like what most people need to know about their diet? You could put in a pamphlet and that's probably all people have the bandwidth for it anyway. And yet there's like, how many books have been written about it, just with utter nonsense.
'''Nick Tiller:''' Yeah, I mean, you just need to look at the the profits from the diet and weight loss industry, right. They've been going up for decades, now at an all time high. I think that that sector of the industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And so these profits have been going up and up at an all time high. And what else has been going up and up? The rates of obesity. Now, the rates of obesity have been climbing since the 1970s, going up exponentially now since COVID shows no sign of yielding. And people don't often enough stop and ask themselves, how can profits from diet and weight loss be going up and rates of obesity also be going up? That doesn't make any sense. There's obviously a mismatch. There's obviously some kind of detachment between the two entities and what it basically comes down to is what we're investing in, what we're spending our money on in diet and weight loss. It obviously isn't working, so we need to try something different.


'''US#00:''' Thousands libraries. Yeah, I mean, just you just need to look at the the profits from the diet and weight loss industry, right. They've, they've been going up for decades now at an all time high that I think that that sector of the industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And so these profits have been going up and up at an all time high. And what else has been going up and up? The rates of obesity. Now, the rates of obesity have been climbing since the 1970s, going up exponentially now since COVID shows no sign of yielding. And people don't often enough stop and ask themselves, how can profits from diet and weight loss be going up and rates of obesity also be going up? Those things that doesn't make, that doesn't make any sense. There's obviously a mismatch. There's obviously some kind of detachment between the two entities and and what it basically comes down to is what we're investing in, what we're spending our money on in diet and weight loss. It obviously isn't working, so we need to try something different.
'''S:''' At the very least, no one has found the hack, right? The one easy trick or the secret to losing weight or maintaining a low weight. Because if they did-


'''S:''' At the very least, no one has found the hack right? The one easy trick or the the secret to losing weight or maintaining a low weight.
'''J:''' You say that you mean the easy, like an easy way.


'''US#00:''' Because if they did.
'''S:''' That's waht I mean by a hack or a secret or a trick.


'''S:''' You say that you mean the easy like an easy. That's telling me by a hack or a secret or about.
'''B:''' What about Ozempic? That's kind of easy.


'''US#00:''' Ozempic trick. That's kind of easy.
'''S:''' Ozempic, that's science, man. That's a drug that works.


'''S:''' Ozempic is that's that's science, man. That's a drug that works, right, Right. Say what you will, it freaking works. You know, I mean, it's it's expensive. And if you go off of it, you probably will gain the weight back.
'''B:''' Right? Right?


'''C:''' That's the downside. Consult your position, right.
'''S:''' Say what you will, it freaking works. You know, I mean, it's it's expensive. And if you go off of it, you probably will gain the weight back. That's the downside. But if the entire like dieting industry, all the different diets that that have come up, if any of them actually worked, they would have staying power, they would be persistent, everybody would be doing it, recommending it, etcetera. But there's just this, yeah, there's just never ending treadmill of different fad diets. None of them at the end of the day work as you say, anything you do, it's like you go from not paying attention to your diet to paying attention to your diet. You going to lose a little weight probably. And like 95% of people will lose weight and then 95% of people will gain it back, usually more. In fact, some experts, you tell me if you agree with this or not. You know, I would argue that dieting is a failed strategy. It's it's about lifestyle factors, not going on a diet. Anything you go on, you can come off of as opposed to this is my healthy habits for life, right?


'''S:''' But yeah, but you know, but if you all the entire like dieting industry, all the different diets that that have come up, if any of them actually worked, they would have staying power, they would be persistent, everybody would be doing it, recommending it, etcetera. But there's just this, yeah, there's just never ending, you know, treadmill of different fad diets. None of them at the end of the day work as you say, anything you do, it's like you go from not paying attention to your diet to paying attention to your diet. You going to lose a little weight probably. And like 95% of people will lose weight and then 95% of people will gain it back, usually more diet. In fact, some experts, you tell me if you what you agree with, if you agree with this or not. You know, I would argue that dieting is a failed strategy. It's it's about lifestyle factors, not going on a diet. Anything you go on, you can come off of as opposed to this is my, this is my healthy habits for life, right?
'''Nick Tiller:''' Well, I sort of express it in the idea of this, this wagon everybody talks about I fell off the wagon. As soon as you conceive the idea of a wagon, you're primed to fall off it there in the path to true weight loss and sustained weight loss. there is no wagon. There cannot be a wagon. It's just about making, it's about changing your lifestyle. This has to be something and the, and what I write about in the health and wellness lie is this idea that when you're starting this new, I don't never call it a diet. I call it a nutritional strategy or whatever it happens to be. You have to ask yourself, is this something I can do forever? If the answer is well, I'm not sure, then it's not going to work because as Steve said, you can go on a juice fast, you'll lose weight because you're in a massive calorie deficit, but you're going to be malnourished and you're not going to maintain it for for longer than a couple of weeks or a month. So any kind of diet is not going to work.


'''US#00:''' Well, I, I sort of express it in the idea of this, this wagon, you know, everybody talks about I fell off the wagon. What? As soon as you conceive the idea of a wagon, you're primed to fall off it there in, in the, in the path to true weight loss and sustained weight loss. There is no wagon. There cannot be a wagon. It's just about making, it's about changing your lifestyle. This has to be something and the, and what I write about in the health and Wellness lie is this idea that when you're starting this new, I don't never call it a diet. I call it a, a nutritional strategy or whatever it happens to be. You have to ask yourself, is this something I can do forever? If the answer is is, well, I'm not sure, then it's not going to work because you know, as as Steve said, you can go on a juice fast, you'll lose weight because you're you're in a massive calorie deficit, but you're going to be malnourished and it's probably going to, you're not going to maintain it for for longer than a couple of weeks or a month. So any kind of diet is not going to work.
'''B:''' If there's a wagon, you better be pushing it.


'''J:''' If there's a wagon, you better be pushing it.
'''Nick Tiller:''' Yeah, exactly.


'''US#00:''' Yeah, exactly.
'''J:''' Nick, that's the statement that dieters hear. And it's like they fearfully step back from it because we wanted to be like, hey, I'm going to do this temporarily. I'm going to lose weight and then I will continue from there and just stay at that weight and eat what I want. And I do get it because it sounds like it's very hard to make lifestyle changes. And I think every human, like most people inherently agree with that. It's hard, I'm going to change this forever. I'm going to eat one dessert a month or something like that. To some people that's impossible. And I think that's the fear, right? That statement means that it's not temporary discomfort and then everything's back to normal. It's a permanent change that you could live with that becomes normal to you.


'''J:''' Nick, that's the statement that dieters hear. And it's like they fearfully step back from it because, you know, we wanted to be like, hey, I'm going to do this temporarily. I'm going to lose weight and then I will continue from there and just stay at that weight and eat what I want. And I, I do get it because it sounds like it's very hard to make lifestyle changes. And I think every human, like most people inherently agree with that. It's hard like I'm, I'm going to change this forever. Like I'm going to eat, you know, one dessert a month or something like that. It's to some people that's impossible. And I think that's the fear, right? That statement means that it's not temporary discomfort and then everything's back to normal. It's it's a permanent change that you could live with that you become that becomes normal to you.
'''Nick Tiller:''' Yeah. And and this is the fundamental problem with if there is a, there are several problems with Ozempic, but this is one of the problems with Ozempic and related drugs or we go view is that semaglutide is obviously the drug. And that is the studies where people have taken semaglutide and they've lost a lot of weight, as soon as they stop taking the drug, they regain most or all of the weight that they've lost. And that is because when physicians prescribe the drug, they are not prescribing it alongside dietary advice and advice on how to maintain the weight loss in the long term. So people become dependent on the drug, which is among other things than appetite suppressor. And it doesn't matter if you suppress your appetite through some semaglutide or if you just have good discipline or you go on a health kick and you lose the weight. If you don't know how to strategize in the long term and if you don't have the basic understanding of healthy eating and physical activity to maintain that weight loss long term, you're just going to regain the weight. So it doesn't matter if it's a diet, if it's a drug or if it's an exercise program. There has to be some kind of long term strategy and everything that we know about health and wellness, we know that it undermines those strategies that are aimed at long term sustainability. It is all about the short term quick fix buyer hack that that people can buy into. Because at the end of the day, we've evolved for economy, right? We haven't evolved to strategize in the long term to get long term sustainable results. So as I've said, whether that's Ozempic or a diet or an exercise program, there has to be a long term strategy otherwise it's not going to work.


'''US#00:''' Yeah. And and this is the fundamental problem with if there, if there is a, there are several problems with Ozempic, but this is one of the problems with Ozempic and related drugs or we go view is that semaglitide is obviously the drug. And, and that is the, in the, in the, in the studies where people have taken semaglitide and they've lost a lot of weight, as soon as they stop taking the drug, they regain most or all of the weight that they've lost. And that is because when, when physicians prescribe the drug, they are not prescribing it alongside dietary advice and advice on how to maintain the, the, the weight loss in the long term. So people become dependent on the drug, which is among other things than appetite suppressor. And it doesn't matter if you suppress your appetite through some agglotide or if you just have, you know, good discipline or you go on a healthcare. Can you lose the weight if you don't know how to strategize in the long term and if you don't have the basic understanding of healthy eating and physical activity to maintain that weight loss long term, you're just going to regain the weight. So it doesn't matter if if it's a diet, if it's a drug or if it's an exercise program. There has to be some kind of long term strategy and everything that we know about health and Wellness, we know that, that it, it undermines those strategies about that that are aimed at long term sustainability. It is all about the short term quick fix buyer hack that that people can, can buy into. Because at the end of the day, we've, we've evolved for economy, right? We, we haven't evolved to strategize in the long term to get long term sustainable results. So, so as I've said, whether that's whether whether it's Ozempic or a diet or an exercise program, there has to be a long term strategy otherwise it's not going to work.
'''S:''' Let me push back on one thing though that you said there, Nick. So you shouldn't assume categorically that physicians are not teaching patients long term diet strategies. So Ozempic, remember, first and foremost, it's a diabetes drug. It's a diabetes drug that also helps you lose weight. But, and I'm telling you, physicians who manage diabetes do have entire staff working for them that do nothing but advise people on their diet and tell people how to have a diabetic diet. That is absolutely part and parcel of standard of care management. Same thing even if you get like bypass surgery for a gastric bypass to lose weight, they absolutely, part of that is going on a diet and they will tell you straight up, this is not going to make you lose weight by itself. I mean, it will to some extent, but this has to be part of a healthy lifestyle in addition to that, it's not a magic solution. So at least that's the standard of care. That's what I've experienced being at an academic institution. I'm not saying there aren't some people out there just writing prescriptions without doing comprehensive care. You know, you'll see everything in medicine. But you know, there is this sense that, yeah, doctors just write prescriptions, but they don't do that. It's really, really not true. If you're a diabetes doctor, you spent a lot of your time advising patients on how to have a healthy diet. Just like even me as like a headache doctor, I spent a lot of time advising my patients on their lifestyle factors, including their diet and how that relates to their headaches. That's always step one actually, I do that before anything else. This narrative that physicians don't do that is simply not true.


'''S:''' Let me push back on one thing though that you said there, Nick. So I you shouldn't assume categorically that physicians are not teaching patients long term diet strategies. So Ozempic, remember, first and foremost, it's a diabetes drugs, a diabetes drug. It's a diabetes drug that also helps you lose weight. But, and I'm telling you, physicians who manage diabetes to have entire staff working for them that do nothing but advise people on their diet and tell people how to have a diabetic diet. That is part, absolutely part and parcel of standard of care management. Same thing even if you get like bypass surgery for a gastric bypass to lose weight, they absolutely, that is part you, part of that is going on a diet and they will tell you straight up, this is not going to make you lose weight by itself. I mean, it will to some extent, but this has to be part of a, you know, a healthy lifestyle. In addition to that, it's not a magic solution. So at least that's the standard of care. That's what I've experienced, you know, being at an academic institution. I'm not saying there aren't some people out there just writing prescriptions without doing comprehensive care. You know, you'll see everything in medicine. But you know, there is this sense that, yeah, doctors just write prescriptions, but they don't do that. It's really, really not true. If you're a diabetes doctor, you spent a lot of your time advising patients on how to have a healthy diet. Just like even me as like a headache doctor, I spent a lot of time advising my patients on their lifestyle factors, including their diet and how that relates to their headaches. That's always step one. Actually, I do that before or anything else, This narrative that physicians don't do that is simply not true.
'''Nick Tiller:''' Well, I suppose in the cases where people have been prescribed Ozempic or Semaglutide Wegovy and it hasn't helped them in the long term. Or they've come off it and they've regained the weight. Perhaps in those instances, if it's not long term sustainable, it's because they haven't maybe had the appropriate support. That might not be the physician's choice. Maybe there's kind of user error there as well. But yeah, I totally get your point.


'''US#00:''' Well, I suppose in, in the cases where people have been prescribed Ozempic or Somaglitide Wegovi and it hasn't helped them in the long term because or, or they've come off it and they've regained the weight. Perhaps in those instances, if it's not long term sustainable, it's because they haven't maybe had the appropriate support. That might not be the physician's choice. Maybe there's, there's kind of user error there as well. But yeah, I, I, I totally get your point.
'''S:''' Yeah, but and, and even there again, and physiologically, like pharmacologically when you come off the drug because it's an appetite suppressant basically, right? So you're essentially down regulating that part of the brain that says you're saying to it, you're not hungry. And then just like anything like you come off that drug and you're going to get a little bit of a rebound effect. Now you're actually more hungry than you were before because you've kind of reset those receptors. So there is a, it's not just behavioral, there is actually a physiological aspect to the weight gain after coming off the drug. This is something that I'm sure is going to get studied more since this drug is relatively new, but that is the dominant hypothesis in terms about why that happens.


'''S:''' Yeah, but and, and even there again, and physiologically, like pharmacologically when you come off the drug because it's an appetite suppressant basically, right. So you're essentially down regulating that part of the brain that says you're, you're, you're say to it, you don't, you're not hungry. And then just like anything like you come off that drug and you're going to get a little bit of a rebound effect. Now you're actually more hungry than you were before because you've kind of reset those receptors. So there is a, it's not just behavioral, there is actually a physiological aspect to the the weight gain after coming off the drug. This is something that I'm sure is going to get studied more since this drug is relatively new, but that is the dominant hypothesis in terms about why that happens.
'''Nick Tiller:''' And this means that it might well be a drug for life for many people.


'''US#00:''' And this means that it might well be a drug for life for many people basically. And maybe, and you know, I've had lots of discussions with people about is, is that a good or a bad thing? Well, I think if you, if you, if you balance the, the risk, the long term risks of taking some maglotide, you know, over, over the course of the second-half of a life or the long term risks of being chronically overweight or obese, I think there's a pretty clear risk to benefit ratio in favor of taking the drug, right? You, you, you can't just go out, go through your life being morbidly obese. That's not an option either.
'''S:''' Yeah, basically. And I've had lots of discussions with people about is, is that a good or a bad thing? Well, I think if you balance the long term risks of taking semaglutide over the course of the second-half of a life or the long term risks of being chronically overweight or obese, I think there's a pretty clear risk to benefit ratio in favor of taking the drug, right? You can't just go through your life being morbidly obese. That's not an option either.


'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. It's risk versus benefit. All right, Nick. Well, thank you so much for joining us.
'''S:''' Yeah, exactly. It's risk versus benefit. All right, Nick. Well, thank you so much for joining us.


'''US#00:''' It's my my pleasure. Thank you guys.
'''Nick Tiller:''' It's my pleasure. Thank you guys.


'''S:''' And just people can find you at nbtiller.com. Your your books are there, The Sketch's Guide to Sports Science. You have two books coming out, The Health and Wellness Lie and What Science Says About Dieting, so we'll keep an eye out for those. Maybe we'll get you back on the show when those books come out.
'''S:''' And just people can find you at nbtiller.com. Your books are there, The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science. You have two books coming out, The Health and wellness Lie and What Science Says About Dieting, so we'll keep an eye out for those. Maybe we'll get you back on the show when those books come out.


'''US#00:''' That would be awesome. Thank you guys, real pleasure.
'''Nick Tiller:''' That would be awesome. Thank you guys, real pleasure.


'''S:''' All right, take care.
'''S:''' All right, take care.


'''US#00:''' Thank you, Nick.
'''E:''' Thank you, Nick.
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'''US#07:''' It's time. For science. Or fiction.
''Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.''


'''S:''' Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 real and one fake and then I challenge my panel of skeptics tell me which one is the fake. We have a nice light hearted theme for this week's science or fiction. That theme is Death I love.
'''S:''' Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics tell me which one is the fake. We have a nice light hearted theme for this week's science or fiction. That theme is Death.


'''B:''' It.
'''B:''' I love it.


'''S:''' I've done that before. It's a good, it's a good science of fiction. So 33 facts about death. OK, ready. OK, here we go. The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. Item number two. It is estimated that over a half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.
'''S:''' I've done that before.


'''US#03:''' How many?
'''C:''' My favourite.


'''S:''' Half of what, half a million? Item number three. In 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease. Bob, go first.
'''S:''' It's a good science of fiction. So 3 facts about death. OK, ready? Here we go. The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. Item number two. It is estimated that over a half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.


'''B:''' These all sound kind of reasonable to me. Damn, 5 million snake bites. 5 million? That's a lot and not many deaths. So what's that one in 250 die? That seems probably high. OK, so half a million extreme weather. That's now that I think about it, that seems over. That's kind of high too. Extreme weather events, half 1,500,000 extreme weather events. That's a lot. So these don't sound too reasonable to me. See COVID. That's that that one. I that that one makes sense. I'm going to go with 500,000 deaths from the weather. She was a little high. I'll go with that as fiction.
'''B:''' How many?


'''J:''' OK, Jay. The first one about The Who report that over 5 million snake bites occur each year and there's over 100,000 deaths. And this is globally correct, Steve.
'''S:''' Half a million. Item number three. In 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease. Bob, go first.
 
'''B:''' These all sound kind of reasonable to me. Damn, 5 million snake bites. 5 million? That's a lot and not many deaths. So that one in 250 die? That seems probably high. OK, so half a million extreme weather. Now that I think about it, that seems kind of high too. Extreme weather events, half a million. 500,000 extreme weather events. That's a lot. So these don't sound too reasonable to me. Let's see, COVID. That one makes sense. I'm going to go with 500,000 deaths from the weather seems a little high. I'll go with that as fiction.
 
'''S:''' OK, Jay.
 
'''J:''' The first one about The WHO report that over 5 million snake bites occur each year and there's over 100,000 deaths. And this is globally, correct Steve?


'''S:''' That is correct. It is the World Health Organization.
'''S:''' That is correct. It is the World Health Organization.


'''J:''' I mean, I would, I would assume that 90% of this is happening in Australia. Just kidding. But I do think, I do think it's true. Sure, there's a, there is an incredible number of poisonous snakes out there. And, you know, I think it's very common that people don't know how to react and don't know what to do. Catch Care.
'''J:''' I mean, I would assume that 90% of this is happening in Australia. Just kidding. But I do think it's true. Sure. There is an incredible number of poisonous snakes out there. And I think it's very common that people don't know how to react and don't know what to do.


'''C:''' Right, you bite snake. Snake bites you.
'''C:''' Right, you bite snake. Snake bites you.


'''J:''' Yeah, bite you? No.
'''J:''' Yeah, bite you?


'''C:''' They're venomous. Venomous because they because they bite you. It'd be poisonous if you bit the snake.
'''C:''' No, they're venomous. Because they because they bite you. It'd be poisonous if you bit the snake.


'''J:''' Yeah, I meant that I always screw that up. Yeah, it's a common thing that people do, you know? Yeah #2 here is. It's estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events. That's a lot.
'''J:''' Yeah, I meant that. I always screw that up. Yeah, it's a common thing that people do, you know? Number two here, it's estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events. That's a lot.


'''B:''' That's what I was saying.
'''B:''' That's what I was saying.


'''J:''' Half a million, I mean, that's a lot of people. And you think we'd be hearing about it more, right? God damn. I'm not sure about that. I mean, I could see, you know, as global warming is getting worse. I can't rule it out though, because again, you know, we're hearing about 100,000 snake bites. So OK then the last one here in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease. Now what is that?
'''J:''' Half a million, I mean, that's a lot of people. And you think we'd be hearing about it more, right? God damn. I'm not sure about that. I mean, I could see as global warming is getting worse. I can't rule it out though, because again we're hearing about 100,000 snake bites. So OK then the last one here in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease. Now what is that?


'''S:''' Heart attacks.
'''S:''' Heart attacks.
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'''J:''' What does the word ischemic mean?
'''J:''' What does the word ischemic mean?


'''S:''' Lack of oxygen, Blood. Lack of oxygen. Oxygen, lack of oxygen.
'''S:''' Lack of oxygen.
 
'''B:''' Lack of blood.
 
'''S:''' Lack of oxygen.


'''J:''' Oh wow, that's a didn't give me the number though, and I think that means something. He didn't give the number in the third one. Second leading cause of death. You know what? I think that was the fiction. I don't think that was the second leading cause of death.
'''J:''' Lack of oxygen. Oh wow, didn't give me the number though, and I think that means something. He didn't give the number in the third one. Second leading cause of death. You know what? I think that was the fiction. I don't think that was the second leading cause of death.


'''S:''' All right, Cara.
'''S:''' All right, Cara.


'''C:''' Jay thinks that it wasn't COVID-19. It could be. I think it was definitely in the top five. I don't think it, I don't know where in the top five because, OK, 2019 is when it first happened. But in China first, by 20/20, it had spread everywhere. But I don't think we got a vaccine until maybe 2021 early or maybe late 2020. But it I definitely don't think it was in everybody's arms right away. So I could see that if it was 2022, I wouldn't buy it because I think we had vaccine and Paxilvid like a pretty good vaccine program by then. But people were dying, a lot of people died from COVID before we knew how to handle it. So we could see that. It's funny because the, the over half a million deaths globally attributed. I was like, yeah, of course. And then you guys were like, that's really high. And I was like, was it? But maybe, maybe I'm primed because of my news item tonight. So I can, I, you probably can't clarify, but you mean like directly attributed like they died in the hurricane, They died from the fire, not like, you know, downstream effects of them or? I will not clarify that. OK. All right. Because then I think if the number is low, I feel like at that point it would be millions plural globally from displacement and stuff. So I don't know, I feel like the numbers either too high or too low. Maybe it's a Goldilocks. And then yeah, globally, 5 million snake bites. I feel like we've talked about this before. We talked about like deadliest animals, 100,000 deaths. Snake bites are horrible. So yeah, if you get bit by a venomous snake and you do not have access to anti venom, which is expensive and difficult to produce, then you might die from it. So in areas with without I think good health services, especially in rural areas, I definitely think people are dying from snake bites. So 100,000 yeah, maybe. So I guess I got to go with Bob and say that that number is off on the on the global what are attributed to extreme weather events.
'''C:''' Jay thinks that it wasn't COVID-19. It could be. I think it was definitely in the top five. I don't know where in the top five because, OK, 2019 is when it first happened. But in China first, by 2020, it had spread everywhere. But I don't think we got a vaccine until maybe 2021 early or maybe late 2020. But it I definitely don't think it was in everybody's arms right away. So I could see that if it was 2022, I wouldn't buy it because I think we had vaccine and Paxilvid like a pretty good vaccine program by then. But people were dying, a lot of people died from COVID before we knew how to handle it. So I could see that. It's funny because over half a million deaths globally attributed. I was like, yeah, of course. And then you guys were like, that's really high. And I was like, was it? But maybe I'm primed because of my news item tonight. You probably can't clarify, but you mean like directly attributed like they died in the hurricane, they died from the fire, not like downstream effects of them or?
 
'''S:''' I will not clarify that.
 
'''C:''' OK. All right. Because then I think if the number is low, I feel like at that point it would be millions plural globally from displacement and stuff. So I don't know, I feel like the numbers either too high or too low. Maybe it's a Goldilocks. And then yeah, globally, 5 million snake bites. I feel like we've talked about this before. We talked about like deadliest animals. 100,000 deaths. Snake bites are horrible. So yeah, if you get bit by a venomous snake and you do not have access to anti venom, which is expensive and difficult to produce, then you might die from it. So in areas without good health services, especially in rural areas, I definitely think people are dying from snake bites. So 100,000 yeah, maybe. So I guess I got to go with Bob and say that that number is off on the on the global, attributed to extreme weather events.
 
'''B:''' Yeah, Cara went with me.


'''B:''' Yeah, Kerry went with me. OK. And Evan?
'''S:''' OK. And Evan?


'''E:''' I think there's a reason why fear of snakes is a real thing. I don't think that just happened accidentally because we recognize it's a true danger. And 100,000 deaths a year, I think is a tribute to that. So yeah, I have a feeling that one's right. And yeah, I think also the I'll go with Bob and Cara because this one about the extreme weather events, it's just so wide, it can be interpreted so many ways and it kind of lets a lot, I think several ways this could be wrong, whereas less so with the COVID-19 one. But I wouldn't be surprised either if that one. But I'll go with Bob and Carol. I'll say extreme weather events, fiction.
'''E:''' I think there's a reason why fear of snakes is a real thing. I don't think that just happened accidentally because we recognize it's a true danger. And 100,000 deaths a year, I think is a tribute to that. So yeah, I have a feeling that one's right. And yeah, I think also the-I'll go with Bob and Cara because this one about the extreme weather events, it's just so wide, it can be interpreted so many ways and it kind of lets a lot, I think several ways this could be wrong, whereas less so with the COVID-19 one. But I wouldn't be surprised either if that one. But I'll go with Bob and Cara. I'll say extreme weather events, fiction.


'''S:''' OK, so you all agree on the snake bites, so we'll start there. The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. You all think that one is science and that one is science. So yeah, so the you have to distinguish between a snake bite and an in venoming, which is when a snake bites and injects venom most.
'''S:''' OK, so you all agree on the snake bites, so we'll start there. The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. You all think that one is science and that one is science. So we have to distinguish between a snake bite and an invenoming, which is when a snake bites and injects venom most snake bites-


'''B:''' Snake bites, usually a dry run.
'''B:''' Usually a dry run.


'''S:''' Yeah, most. Or they're just not venomous.
'''S:''' Or they're just not venomous.


'''C:''' Or they're not venomous snakes. Yeah, yeah, that.
'''C:''' Or they're not venomous snakes.


'''S:''' Yeah.
'''B:''' Yeah, that too.
 
'''C:''' And that wouldn't really kill you unless you had a really inopportune place.
 
'''S:''' 5.4 million people worldwide are bitten by snakes, 1.8 to 2.7, so half are in venomings and of those around 100,000 die from year to year. It's like 81 to 137,000 at the high end. And then two to three times that number have amputations or permanent disability from the snake bite even though they don't die. I thought that number was huge. You know, that's a lot of people die from snake bites.
 
'''C:''' I'm assuming again that they're in like rural or developing.
 
'''S:''' Of course. I'm sure they're not in New York City.
 
'''C:''' Yeah, they don't have access to good healthcare. But even here people die from snake.
 
'''E:''' Yeah, sure.


'''C:''' And that wouldn't really. Kill you unless you. Had a really inopportune place, yeah.
'''C:''' You got to get help fast and you got to hope that they have the anti venom for that snake.


'''S:''' 5.4 million people worldwide are bitten by snakes, eight 1.8 to 2.7, so half are in venomings and of those around 100,000 die from year to year. It's like 81 to 137,000 at the high end. And then two to three times that number have amputations or permanent disability from the snake bite even though they don't die. I thought that number was huge. You know, that's a lot of people die from snake bites.
'''B:''' Yeah, right?


'''C:''' You know yeah, but I'm assuming again that they're in like rural or developing. Of course I'm sure they don't have Yeah, they don't have access to good healthcare. But even here people die from snake. Yeah, sure. Yes, like you got to get.
'''S:''' All right, I'm actually bringing a separate news item about using artificial intelligence to design more effective anti venoms proteins.


'''E:''' US, yeah.
'''E:''' Do it.


'''C:''' You got to get help fast and you got to hope that they have the anti venom for that snake. Yeah.
'''S:''' All right, let's go to number two. It is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events. Bob, Cara and Evan, you think this one is the fiction. Jay, you think this one is science. And this one is the fiction. So what do you think the number is?


'''E:''' Yeah, right.
'''E:''' 50,000 or 5 million?


'''S:''' All right, I'm actually bringing a separate news item about using artificial intelligence to design more effective anti venoms proteins. Do it. Yeah. All right, let's go to #2 It is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events. Bob, Cara and Evan, you think this one is the fiction? Jay, you think this one is science and this one is the fiction? Yeah. So what do you think the number is?
'''C:''' I think it's 50,000 directly, but like directly attributable to extreme wather events.


'''C:''' Well. 50,000 or 5 million? I think it's 50,000 directly, but like directly attributable. To Yeah, but how are we defining these terms? Extreme weather events.
'''E:''' Yeah, but how are we defining these terms? Extreme weather events.


'''S:''' I know it's all so.
'''S:''' I know it's all so-


'''B:''' 500,000 and one I'll know you say over half a million.
'''B:''' 500,001, I'll know you say over half a million.


'''C:''' Yeah, but it's 50,000. The number is half a million. Sorry. Yeah.
'''C:''' Yeah, but it's 50,000. The number is half a million. Sorry. Yeah.


'''S:''' 11,500. Oh, it's not. Yeah, not as many as you think. more than I thought. Wow.
'''S:''' 11,500. Yeah, not as many as you think.


'''C:''' Really.
'''B:''' More than I thought. Wow.


'''S:''' I mean less.
'''C:''' Really?


'''C:''' Even less than I thought.
'''B:''' I mean less. Even less than I thought.


'''S:''' Even less. Than I thought. Fewer than I thought. But I thought I'd get you one. Yeah, cuz we think, yeah, this one tsunami could wipe out a lot of people.
'''S:''' Even less.
 
'''B:''' Fewer than I thought.
 
'''S:''' But I thought I'd get you on-yeah, because we think, yeah, this one tsunami could wipe out a lot of people.


'''E:''' Is a tsunami considered a weather event?
'''E:''' Is a tsunami considered a weather event?
Line 705: Line 799:
'''S:''' Of course.
'''S:''' Of course.


'''E:''' Hell yeah. Yeah, but it's an earthquake. How's that weather?
'''B:''' Hell yeah.


'''S:''' Wait, yeah, interesting point. Yeah, it's always, it's always a matter of definition, but it's the. Fix.
'''E:''' Yeah, but it's an earthquake. How's that weather?


'''E:''' But that one in 2004, I mean, Oh my gosh, that 200,000 deaths, yeah, from that one. Right. That was I saw a whole. I've seen so many documents.
'''B:''' Wait, yeah, interesting point.


'''S:''' Yeah, I saw a whole document around. It was unbelievable.
'''S:''' Yeah, it's always a matter of definition, but it's the fiction.


'''E:''' And like those videos?
'''E:''' But that one in 2004, I mean, oh my gosh, that 200,000 deaths from that one. I've seen so many documentaries.


'''S:''' Is at first it like it looks really tame. The water's just sort of strolling in. But then when you get a little closer, you realize, like, no, that water is carrying houses and trucks and cars and boats and debris. And if you're in that, you are, you are in a grinder. You're in a meat grinder. There's no, yeah, there's no way you could survive that.
'''S:''' Yeah, I saw a whole documentary. It was unbelievable. At first it looks really tame. The water's just sort of strolling in. But then when you get a little closer, you realize, like, no, that water is carrying houses and trucks and cars and boats and debris. And if you're in that, you are in a grinder. You're in a meat grinder. There's no way you could survive that. Water is powerful.


'''US#03:''' Yeah, water is so. Scary. Yeah. Get to high ground.
'''B:''' Get to high ground.


'''S:''' Yes, you have to get the high.
'''S:''' Yes, you have to get the high ground.


'''US#03:''' Ground fast as you can.
'''B:''' As fast as you can.


'''S:''' That means that in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease. Is science that. Yeah, that's some interesting to think that, you know, well, a pandemic like that rocketed to almost was like almost almost as high as ischemic heart disease. It's like really just barely behind it. More than stroke, more than COPD or more than diabetes.
'''S:''' That means that in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease is science. Yeah, that's interesting to think that well, a pandemic like that rocketed to almost was like almost as high as ischemic heart disease. It's like really just barely behind it. More than stroke, more than COPD or more than diabetes.


'''E:''' Were there 2 million global deaths in that year? I don't. Do you have an exact number on?
'''E:''' Were there 2 million global deaths in that year? Do you have an exact number on?


'''S:''' So COVID-19 was directly responsible for 8.8 million deaths in 2021. Yeah, it was 9.1 million for ischemic heart disease. So again, it was pretty close. She was 8.8 million. Yeah, people die. People die for a lot of reasons.
'''S:''' So COVID-19 was directly responsible for 8.8 million deaths in 2021. Yeah, it was 9.1 million for ischemic heart disease. So again, it was pretty close. She was 8.8 million. Yeah, people die. People die for a lot of reasons.
Line 733: Line 827:
'''S:''' But good job guys.
'''S:''' But good job guys.


'''B:''' I think I propose if you're 1st and you get it right, I think you should get 1.2 wins.
'''B:''' I propose if you're first and you get it right, I think you should get 1.2 wins.


'''S:''' Yeah, you think so? Yeah, it's not happening.
'''S:''' Yeah, you think so? Yeah, it's not happening.
Line 745: Line 839:
}}
}}


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


'''E:''' We had a quote suggestion this week from a listener in Johannesburg, South Africa. Iqbal. How? How would I pronounce that Iqbal?
'''E:''' We had a quote suggestion this week from a listener in Johannesburg, South Africa. Iqbal. How would I pronounce that? Iqbal?


'''C:''' Iqbal maybe?
'''C:''' Iqbal maybe?


'''E:''' I'm I'm not familiar. With that name. So yeah, very cool name. So thank you for this suggestion. Knowledge is a paradox. The more one understands, the more one realizes the vastness of his ignorance. And that was spoken by Victor, also known as the Herald, in season 2 of the hit Netflix show Arcane. League of Legends, which has been which has been referred to me so many times. I I that is on my soon to watch list.
'''E:''' I'm not familiar with that name.
 
'''C:''' Cool name.
 
'''E:''' Yeah, very cool name. So thank you for this suggestion. "Knowledge is a paradox. The more one understands, the more one realizes the vastness of his ignorance." And that was spoken by Victor, also known as the Herald, in season 2 of the hit Netflix show Arcane, League of Legends, which has been which has been referred to me so many times. I that is on my soon to watch list.
 
'''B:''' Highly recommend it, great animation.


'''S:''' The animation is off the hook. It is like here, the best animation I've seen and the story is fantastic. The writing like this is typical of it, like it's really intelligently written. The characters are all amazing. It's just like the the imagery blows you away. It's highly recommended, Yeah, check it out if you're into that sort of thing. It's basically it's a, it's a magic infused steampunk, Yeah.
'''S:''' The animation is off the hook. It is the best animation I've seen and the story is fantastic. The writing, this is typical of it, like it's really intelligently written. The characters are all amazing. The imagery blows you away. It's highly recommended.


'''E:''' Yeah.
'''B:''' Yeah, check it out.
 
'''S:''' If you're into that sort of thing. It's basically it's a, it's a magic infused steampunk. Very good. I know steampunk is a little past its peak, but this doesn't matter. It's just the aesthetic is fantastic.


'''S:''' Very good, so cool. I know steampunk is a little past its peak, but this doesn't matter. It's just the aesthetic is it's beautiful, fantastic.
'''B:''' It's beautiful.


'''E:''' Yeah, it's beautiful. Well, it's nice to see a quote like this appear in a show like that.
'''E:''' Well, it's nice to see a quote like this appear in a show like that.


'''S:''' Yeah. All right. Thank you, Evan.
'''S:''' Yeah. All right. Thank you, Evan.
Line 767: Line 869:
'''S:''' And thank all of you for joining me this week.
'''S:''' And thank all of you for joining me this week.


'''C:''' You, Steve.
'''C:''' Thank you, Steve.
 
'''B:''' Sure man.


'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.
'''E:''' Thank you, Steve.


'''S:''' And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
== Signoff ==
 
'''S:''' —and until next week, this is your {{SGU}}.  
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SGU Episode 1019
January 18th 2025
1019.jpg

"Exploring the cosmos: where engineering meets the wonders of the universe."

SGU 1018                      SGU 1020

Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella

B: Bob Novella

C: Cara Santa Maria

J: Jay Novella

E: Evan Bernstein

Quote of the Week

"Knowledge is a paradox. The more one understands, the more one realizes the vastness of his ignorance." Netflix show: Arcane - League of Legends.

Spoken by Viktor (also known as the Herald) in season 2 of the hit

Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum


Intro[edit]

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 Wednesday, January 15th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

S: Cara, we got to start with an update. How you doing?

C: I'm good. I'm OK. The city is. It's not. I mean, I'm OK insofar as I'm OK. You know what I mean? Maybe you don't.

E: Yeah, by comparison to to many others.

C: By comparison to many others and also just by comparison to this same time last week, I guess we could say there's two ways to answer the question when people ask how are you? And actually, many people were sharing a meme from Broad City across social media that was like everyone in LA this week. And it's one of the main characters going I'm or like, how are you? But like she's holding up air quotes because the one way is I'm safe and I'm not and my house is didn't burn down. Like, so in that sense, yes, I'm OK psychologically, I don't know how OK people are right now. We were talking off air before we started recording. But the saying right now, and I think so far everybody I've talked to, there's truth to it. If you live in LA, everyone in LA knows somebody who lost everything. You know, it's a communal tragedy. And I've been working with patients all week. I've been working with myself, with my supervisors and also friends, family members, all that. And there's this sense that it's, it's kind of hard to articulate, but I used a metaphor of like, if you fall into the ocean and you're splashing and you feel like you're drowning, and then somebody throws a life preserver to you and you can look up and you can see the sturdiness of the boat that threw out the life preserver. So very often when we're dealing with our own stuff, and I work with cancer patients, so they're dealing with their stuff. Even amongst the most difficult personal tragedy, there's a firmament around you. There's a sense of security when you look around. But this past week, LA is not secure. And so it's like looking up and the boat itself is on fire. We're sinking and that's sort of the feeling that most people have. And I think one of the hardest realizations is when you turn on the news or you pick up your phone or you reach out to somebody who's not right here and you realize that life didn't stop. And this is always really tough in the grief process. You're going through something really difficult, and the world is still going and there's still the confirmation hearings, and there's still. And you're just like, oh my God. Because you feel like everything's on pause.

E: I feel that way when somebody close to me has passed away or died.

C: Yeah, You want everybody to go. Just stop for a minute. Just stop doing all the things. Don't you see? Somebody died, but that's how life is. It's tough to be a provider against this background, especially a new one. So a lot of processing around that it's like Mr. Rogers, like look for the helpers. And then it's like, but who's helping the helpers? Like, I hope that our first responders are taking up all of the offers for pro bono therapy, are really leaning on their loved ones right now because it's a lot.

S: Well, we're going to talk in a little bit about some of the just the science surrounding what's happening with the yeah, with the fire.

News Items[edit]

Does Fact-Checking Work (03:33)[edit]

S: But let's go on to some news items, Jay, does fact checking social media work?

J: Yeah, before I start guys, I'd be curious to hear what you think.

C: Zuck doesn't think so.

E: Well.

C: I think it probably does to some extent. I mean work is a loaded question.

E: Yeah, it seems kind of broad.

C: Does it work?

S: This is what I think about it. If you just tell people this is fake, that doesn't work. If you actually suppress it in the algorithm or keep it from from either going online at all or being spread, that absolutely does work.

C: Right, right. Like this is demonstrably untrue. So therefore it is against our policy to continue to show it as if it is true. Yeah.

J: Well, it turns out it's complicated, we have statistics, but in the end there is a definite positive influence. So let me start at the beginning here because this news item is inspired by Zuckerberg's change to Facebook's platform where Meta announced that they have plans to scrap their third party fact checking program. It's been in place since 2016. And the program they paid independent groups to verify the accuracy of articles and posts on Facebook. And this plan moving forward is to use a Crowdsource system, right? They'll implement a model that's inspired by Twitter's community notes, which some of you might be aware of. The system allows users to contribute contacts and additional information to post on the platform. And the aim is to provide clarity or correct misinformation by those community people. So Meta says this change was made to address concerns about bias and censorship. Joel Kaplan, who is Meta's chief global affairs officer, said the following, experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. So I think that his comment is straight up marketing BS.

C: Yeah, it sounds very loaded to me.

J: Right? Totally. The experts he's referring to, these aren't regular people. They have a long, long, impressive list of credentials, and I'm going to name a few of them. This is what they typically have lots of variation, of course, but they hire people as professionals in the field, right? So they have an academic background in the relevant fields that they're observing and that they're editing. They commonly have critical thinking skills. They could be journalists. They have a lot of credentials. These are not lightweight people that come in and say, hey, look, I circled this in the Wanted ads like, no, these are people that have very strong legitimate credentials that qualify them. And the word expert is not used loosely here. They are content experts. They could do lots of different things, like they could be able to source the material, the comment all the way back to its source and then figure out how legitimate that source is or isn't. Look it up. You'll be interested to read the credentials that these people typically have. So Meta's new approach, like I said, is mirroring the community notes on Twitter. And I dare say that it didn't really work that well, especially Elon Musk's version, which this throws all of that out the window. So an obvious question is, does general fact checking actually work? Of course, the intent of the company has to be very firm and very good. They have to have good intentions because they they are the ultimate quality control of whatever fact checking is happening. In general to answer the question of does fact checking actually work like Steve says, research suggests it absolutely does. Studies done on the topic show similar conclusions that fact checking reduces beliefs about false claims. I know that's an easy sentence to say, but there's a lot behind that. And but you have to let that fact ride as it is, because it is a very simple answer. Yes, fact checking works. Now, of course, we can discuss for hours on what degree that it works. And it's very hard to judge that just by the nature of what's being done here.

C: Jay, I mean, fact checking has been the backbone of legitimate journalism for all of journalism.

J: Right. I mean, it is absolute. It's a, it's a, it's a cornerstone of journalism.

C: And journalists don't share things that don't pass muster under fact checking. So by definition it is. It's at least a, what would you call it, threshold. A minimum standard.

J: Right, I totally agree, absolutely agree. And you know, of course, if you had total control over the information and with the intent on helping humanity, then that false information would be very short lived on social media and wouldn't get to as many eyes as these pieces of information typically do. But let me give you guys a for instance, a 2019 meta analysis of studies involving more than 20,000 participants. They found that fact checking had a clear positive effect on people's political beliefs, helping them to actually better differentiate between truth and falsehood. That's great. And that says it all right there. The ideal scenario is to prevent the misinformation from spreading in the 1st place. You want to absolutely limit its exposure to the masses. You want to contain it as quickly as possible. But when people are already exposed, fact checking actually can still reduce its impact, of course, because they're either they're removing it or they're putting up flags that say this information can't be verified. It doesn't have a clear source. That type of thing actually does have an impact. Now, why does fact checking still matter? Well, fact checking might not always change minds directly, but it does play a big role in the shaping of the online information ecosystem. If you think about all the information that's out there online and how that information revolves around groups of people, like minded people, people different political beliefs, people that have core beliefs that are different. The information that surrounds skeptics is very different than the information that surrounds health and fitness people. But one thing about misinformation is that it kind of brushes over all of those groups and subgroups and it does get to everybody, right? Because it can exist in any category that's out there. I think it's really important to say that without the fact checking, what we're going to see is we're going to see the proliferation of misinformation and then there's going to be a battle. It's going to create battlefields very similar to what we see on Wikipedia, right? Wikipedia has approved Wikipedia editors and they could do things like creating new pages, which is absolutely important because as things happen, we want to see posts that are gathering all the information. Like you can go and look up the the LA fires and there'll be a post on Wikipedia about that gives up to date information on it. Now the knife cuts both ways. Because in an ideal Wikipedia situation, we have people that are unbiased and have the skill sets to to do this. And they're going to do the best job that they can. And they're going to vet the information. They're going to do all the steps that we skeptics have learned how to vet information. But you have people that become editors that you have other intentions, right? And I've talked to Wikipedia editors that say that they're in a tug of war where they'll go on one day and they'll add information, they'll shape it, they'll make it present reality. And then you have people that will come in that night or the next day or whatever, the next approval, whenever they can edit it again, because it's not like a moment to moment. Then what happens? They change it and they put back in the misinformation because they're having a tug of war over that. This is what we can expect to happen on Meta when people are going to be going in who don't have the qualifications, who, who really shouldn't be editing information or doing anything to provide direction to other people on what's true and what's not true. It's going to be a train wreck. And I'm really concerned because we already live in a world that has weaponized misinformation. It's rampant. Meta's move is a horrible sign of the web sinking deeper into misinformation. Fact checking isn't a panacea, but it's one of the few tools proven to have a positive impact. And what we should be doing is leaning into it and figuring out ways to even make it more useful and more powerful. But that's not the world we live in.

C: But also, why are people getting their news from Facebook?

S: Because that ship has sailed. I mean, people are using social media as a convenient way to just get information about the world. And they may not even be looking for news so much as just looking for content but that's, this is what people are talking about today. They're talking about whatever is happening. And so it becomes the de facto source of news.

C: Do you think that this is going to do for Facebook what Elon taking over Twitter did? Like I'm not there. Most people I know aren't on Twitter anymore. And every time I do reopen the app, it's a cesspool. It's like an abandoned car that's overrun with rats. Like I'll look at posts and it's just, it's amazing the rhetoric that I see and just the spam and the bots and I don't know what happened to it, but do you think that's going to happen to Facebook?

S: Yeah. I mean, I think it would, sure, that's the concern, right? It's that you're opening the floodgates. I mean, this is a deeper conversation about social media. If you have like just completely unregulated social media platform where people can say whatever they want to say and there's no fact checking or editorial filter or limit on hate speech or anything, then it becomes a playground for psychopaths. It becomes a tool for propaganda of every type. The people who have the most time on their hands and the most obsession about topics are the ones who are going to be disproportionately represented. So it's not like, oh, it's going to be a free marketplace of ideas where the quality of the idea is the one factor that's going to allow things to rise to the cream, to rise to the top. That's not what's happening. That is demonstrably not what's happening. It's you have the obsessive extreme propaganda speech is what is propagated and it's drowning out all other types of speech.

C: You can purchase speech. So people who have a monetary interest in changing political ideology or changing thoughts or changing purchasing power. You don't even know what's behind most of these posts. Like why are they posting it? Are they trying to swing an election? Are they trying to get you by something? Are they trying to whatever.

S: Yeah, that's the other thing. It's a great point. There's no transparency. So normally, like if you have a political ad, you have to say this ad is supported by this person, but you can have de facto political ads on social media with no disclosure of who's behind them at all. So like all of the rules that have evolved over the last century or whatever, in terms of, as you say, quality journalism, of fairness and reporting, of transparency in who is speaking or whatever, it's all gone.

B: Hasta la vista.

S: Yeah, either we need to just run this psychological social experiment and see what happens, although I think that we have a pretty good idea, what's happening, or we have to figure out how to transfer the same kind of social protections to this new media, you know?

E: Warning labels.

S: Well, I think that this warning labels don't really work.

E: Well, I guess that's my point. What does work? What has been proven to work in these we'll.

B: We'll get right on it right after we fix global climate change.

C: Well, and I don't want to skip ahead to my news item, but I'm going to touch on an app that is an app that had an express intention that is run by individuals, actually team of people with a very specific mission that is not for sale, that does not scrub user data and is factual only. I mean, so much of that, so much of how you affect change in this situation is who is controlling the platform and what are their rules.

S: Yeah. So I think that's a good point, Cara, is that so one choice we have as consumers is which social media will be patronized, right? And so we need to pick social media apps that do have good quality and that do have rules of engagement, which promote at least have a minimum filter for the worst kind of propaganda, hate speech, straight up lies, all that stuff. So we may just have to just go off of platforms that are not doing that. And like we've moved a lot of us over to Bluesky just because it for now anyway, it seems to be a little bit better environment. But again-

C: It feels like old Twitter a little.

S: That's not a panacea either, because then that just contributes to for the further isolation of societies. Now we're going to have like, we have red states, blue states, we're going to have Twitter people and Bluesky people. We're going to be siloing ourselves into these subcultures of social media platforms. That's not good.

C: But that's a larger geopolitical question, right? Like you think about the Civil War and you think about areas like in the United States where ultimately we stayed one nation where a lot of people, we made compromises that many people weren't happy with and a lot of people were disgruntled. And that continues to this day in our policy and in the way that we vote. And then you see other nations where they split or where people seceded and they said, you know what, we have irreconcilable differences and the people who think this way are going to live here and the people who think that way are going to live there. And I'm not saying either way is right, but that does play out time and time again. So is the answer always to say, let's not be siloed? Maybe. But does that create more conflict? Does it create less conflict? I don't know. It's a complicated question, especially when the ideologies are so diametrically opposed.

S: Yeah, yeah, it's hard to, I guess, if in order for a forest to be green, all the trees must be green, right? It's hard to have a society that's open and where we have open conversation and good faith and everybody's reasonable, right? Can't have a reasonable society unless most of the people are reasonable, and we're not going to fix that with social media.

C: No, and there's a reason that after World War 2 Germany had very strict laws about what you could say and what you could do, because they said this is not in keeping with a fair and just society. We will not allow Nazi propaganda to flourish after the war. We have to tamp it down. So you're right, Steve. I think it's really complicated when I guess it depends on the goals, right? What are the goals of the people in the society and do they agree?

S: Yeah, there's no perfect solution because at the end of the day either you're going to have a chaos, anarchy, free for all, or somebody is going to be imposing some kind of filter. And then of course, that who is that person? Who's that group? Who's that entity? What are their motivations, right? There's something to be said for free speech. Of course we we support free speech strongly, but free speech requires a venue where your voice can be heard and not overwhelmed by a bunch of psychopaths who are just trolling everybody or bots who are spreading propaganda.

C: And free speech only means that the government does not abridge it. You know, like really, when it comes down to it.

S: That's the First Amendment, yes, we could distinguish free the concept of free speech and the 1st Amendment.

C: Which I think most Americans are-

S: They conflate the two often.

C: Conflating the two, yes.

S: Absolutely, but free speech doesn't mean again a free for all. It doesn't mean that like there isn't an editorial policy.

E: You can't defraud people.

C: Yeah.

S: Right.

C: Yeah, you can't straight up lie about somebody. And like, yeah, there's a lot of limits to free speech.

E: Defame, yeah.

S: It doesn't mean you can't fact check. Fact checking doesn't mean you don't have free speech. It means is there somebody who's going to look it up and say that's wrong, here's the real answer, or here's the vetted information. So yeah, so I think there's that. And I think obviously people need to be skeptical, have critical thinking skills at media savvy because it is the Wild West now.

E: Yeah, we're we have to look out for ourselves more than ever.

S: More than ever, absolutely.

E: It was true 20-30 years ago, it's more true today.

S: Yeah, but again, having said that, being somebody who spends a lot of time on TikTok because of we're we're promoting skeptical content on TikTok, it is a cesspool of misinformation, anti intellectualism and just utter nonsense.

E: Oh gosh, if you don't have some minimum level of intellectual protection like mental protection against that, you will fall prey to so much stuff you don't even realize you're falling prey to it.

S: But we, but again, we live in a democracy. So we also have to think about this statistically. Like if a majority of people take over into radicalized ignorance, that's the society that we have. Doesn't matter if it's 51%, that's now the ruling majority of our democracy.

C: And it's going to be that way if we don't prioritize education.

S: Yeah.

C: That has to be at the top of our list.

S: But then that that also becomes a war, as we know because then you have-

C: Absolutely.

S: -some states fighting against teaching critical thinking, you know.

C: Or just, I don't know, funding schools?

S: There are some basics there.

E: No easy answers as usual.

B: Steve, Steve, can we talk about something positive, fun and cool?

S: Yes, I'm just about to pivot, we're not going to solve this problem. We're just going to whine about it.

Nuclear Electric Propulsion (21:44)[edit]

S: Bob, tell us about nuclear electric propulsion.

B: Oh yeah, babe.

E: What? That doesn't exist.

B: All right, so this was fun. 2 cool companies have signed a strategic partnership to create a powerful nuclear electric rocket that could finally make serious progress in ending the dominance of chemical rockets for space travel. And I want this to happen so bad. So bad that I don't even care about the grammar of this sentence.

E: Wait a minute. Hang on. We in the last 12 months, we must have touched on at least 6 or 8 news items and we've come to the conclusion that it's chemical propulsion and that's it. That's the only way we get anywhere.

B: No.

E: Isn't that kind of what we concluded?

B: Chemical propulsion. I'll talk a little bit about this at the end of my talk, but chemical propulsion is going to stay for quite a long time to get to orbit, but once you're in orbit, it's days are numbered. Absolutely, absolutely. OK, so two companies are Ad Astra and Space Nuclear Corporation, also simply called Space Nukes, which is an awesome name.

C: That's terrifying name.

B: I know. It's fun, though. Let's start with the rocket company Ad Astra. They've been developing an electric rocket engine called VASIMIR. They describe it on their website as a disruptive development. I love some disruptive development in the space propulsion status quo. It's the product of more than 40 years of research in plasma physics and electric propulsion, first at the United States Department of Energy, and NASA, and later now at at Astro Rocket Company. Now, electric rocket engines are distinct from chemical rockets. We all know chemical rockets and I barely tolerate them at this point. As the name implies, they use electricity to accelerate propellant. VASIMIR rocket engines are different than other well known electric engines that I'm sure you have heard of, especially if you listen to the show, namely ion engines and Hall-effect thrusters. Jay talked about them a little while ago. These VASIMIR is different than those. VASIMIR is in some ways a hybrid of those two.

J: It's a hybrid.

B: It's a hybrid. Many call VASIMIR, it's a magnetoplasma. It's a better descriptor, much better than ion engine or Hall-effect. This technique is different in that it uses powerful radio waves to heat a gas propellant, and that gas propellant then becomes the most common state of matter in the universe. What is that?

S: Plasma.

B: Plasma. Yes.

C: Plasma's the most common?

B: All stars are plasma. So that basically does that right there. So a plasma, there's a soup of free electrons and positive ions, basically just unbinds the electrons from the atomic nucleons, a very hot charged gas, so this super gas then can now be controlled by magnetic field. And that was the goal. It's ionized so that it can be controlled and that magnetic field guides and accelerates the plasma out the back of the rocket as a potent rocket thrust. Thank you Newton's third law. So that's basically how it works. Very basically. So cool stuff. But some of you might be thinking, well, what does VASIMIR stand for, right? It's got to stand for something, right? It's got to be an acronym. VASIMIR stands for Variable Specific Impulse Magneto LASMA rocket. And those first 3 words Variable specific Impulse make this rocket incredible and unique. So to explain that, let's talk about this. Chemical rocket fuel, this is a really interesting angle. Chemical rocket fuel reaches thousands of degrees, very hot, right? Thousands of degrees. But electric plasma engines can get to millions of degrees. And that is a critical distinction. So because the higher the temperature, think about it, the higher the temperature, the more the whatever is heated to that degree is bouncing around hitting each other all the atoms. The higher the temperature, the faster the exhaust. And that means that every gram of fuel can deliver more energy, right? So going from thousands of degrees to millions of degrees therefore means that the propellant is more effectively being converted into thrust. So you got that. So this increase in efficiency for rockets is expressed as specific impulse ISP, a critical rocketry word if ever there was one. If you if you read about rockets and rocket technology, you have probably come across specific impulse, ISP. It's basically deals with the efficiency, how effectively the propellant is converted into thrust. Now, chemical rockets typically have an ISP rating in the hundreds. VASIMIR could have an ISP over 5000. So keep that in mind out. So that's the background. So VASIMIR stands for a variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket. So that means that this rocket can actually change its specific impulse depending on the needs of the specific mission that it is on. I'm not aware of of really any other rocket design that really does this like this.

C: Sorry Bob, define impulse again.

B: ISP, specific impulse is a measure of how efficiently the fuel is converted into thrust. And remember as I said, that the higher the temperature, the faster it shoots out the back. And because it's going faster, that means you're getting more bang for your buck for that fuel. So what does this mean this variable specific impulse, what does that mean for this rocket? So that means say you're near the gravity of a planet and you need some extra thrust. You can just hit the dial and you can lower the ISP and you get more thrust. You know, not chemical rocket like thrust, but you're still getting much more thrust than you would think from an electric rocket. But remember, though, when you got a lot of thrust, though, it's less efficient. The ISP is going down, so it becomes less efficient, but you could do that on demand. So there on the other hand, if the rocket is cruising through deep space, the rocket can be switched to high ISP mode like a high gear and become super efficient. And then you're using the fuel that's available just in very tiny amounts and then otherwise. So now remember, acceleration is low in this mode, right? Because the thrust that you're throwing out is going very, very fast, but you're not throwing out a lot of it, right? That's kind of inherent in these types of rockets. So it's not throwing out as much mass as a chemical rocket, but what it is throwing out is throwing at very, very, very, very high speed. So acceleration is low in this mode, but it doesn't matter in for a lot of missions, because you're the velocity, it can be built up over time, slowly over time, and eventually going faster than chemical rocket speeds. So this rocket can actually dial up or down. It can go into low gear near a near a gravity where it needs higher thrust, or it could go into a high gear, a high ISP mode where it's super efficient and it can cruise and accelerate for weeks or months or even longer. So that's what you could do with this type of rocket design. So that's all great and stuff, but all that awesomeness, especially ionizing the fuel requires a lot of power. And that is one of the key problems with VASIMIR. So in space that typically means that solar panels or perhaps RTGs, radio isotope thermal generators, but neither of those options are really a good fit for VASIMIR. Solar panels would need to be stupidly large to supply enough power and the RTGs are great for a Voyager or Perseverance, but not for an engine like this. So we need something to soup up that can get high density electrical energy for this VASIMIR. And this is where space nuclear corporation, Space nukes comes into play. They were famous for their killer power device. I talked about that on episode 859. Killer power is essentially a small nuclear reactor made to power electronics on the moon, Mars, and deep space away from easy solar panels or other types of technology that can get you what you need. Currently, it's designed to supply one to 10 kilowatts of electrical power. Space Nukes has demonstrated A1 kilowatt device back in 2018 and it's now working with US Space Force on a project called JETSON, which is pretty fun, for a 12 kilowatt version. I assume though I got to say that in the near future, the US Space Force will be renamed X Force. So I'm just going to throw that out there, see if that happens. Kilopower Now, Jay, you and I were talking about this earlier. Kilopower uses a sterling heat engine, which is a very, very efficient engine that convert heat from the reactor into electricity. It's very efficient, more efficient than solar panels and it can operate for 15 years continuously. That that just blows my mind. I want a few of those under my damn house. OK, so the obvious idea here is that this partnership is to integrate the nuclear reactor with the propulsion technology vastly leveling up the VASIMIR, right? That mean it would be an amazing. The company partnership is described this way on the Ad Astro website. The Memorandum of Understanding MOU, Memorandum for Understanding between Ad Astra and Space Nukes outlines a shared vision and passion for developing and demonstrating NEP, nuclear electric propulsion technology and establishes a framework by which both companies will jointly pursue technical and business development. David Poston, CTO of Space Nuke said nuclear electric propulsion will achieve game changing performance via stepwise technology evolution. Our plan will begin with 100 kilowatt plus nuclear electric propulsion system as a stepping stone to get this a less than 5 kilogram per kilowatt multi MW NEP system. That's with the capability to reduce the round trip human transit time to Mars from more than a year to a few months. So they're saying with this 100 kilowatt system that they are developing that they'll hopefully get to before too long, they could take a round trip human transit time to Mars from more than a year to a few months. That's a huge game changer in getting to Mars. A few months. The risk from solar radiation and galactic radiation is much less. Three months compared to over 12 months could be a game changer. Now these plans are in the early stages, but they say in the press release the partnership aims to demonstrate high power NEP in a flight program by the end of the decade and commercialize the technology in the 2030s. So that seems fairly aggressive. Commercialize it by the in the 2030s. I hope these two crazy kids can make it work. So this is really fascinating. I really hope that they, I mean, coming up with a nuclear electric propulsion engine like this is something that I hope I can really see in my in my lifetime. Now remember, I got to say as a closing, keep in mind a VASIMIR rocket, even in low gear, right? Even in low ISP with maximum thrust still won't be able to launch off the surface of the earth. Gravity is it's too high, right? Gravity is way too high. It's thrust to weight ratio is too low. It's still not as good as chemical rocket. There are however extreme nuclear rocket designs that could make potentially a surface launch possible. But the engineering problems are non trivial. Not to mention regulatory, environmental and moral problems. Since it would would most likely or probably or maybe spew radiation over half a continent. It could be nasty stuff, but it might work. It might work, but yeah, so it unfortunately, it's so it seems likely to me that the only reaction engine, something that throws stuff out the back to take advantage of Newton's third law, the only reaction engine that will ever launch from the Earth to orbit will probably be chemical rockets, unfortunately. But I hope orbital rings eventually will make them finally obsolete in a couple 100 years. But we're going to wait for that one. No, Steve, I'm not, Orbital rings could make could make the chemical rockets obsolete because you can get to the orbital rings because you can get to them. They could be low altitude. They're not in low Earth orbit. They're much, much lower because they're orbital rings, which are a different beast entirely, which we've never really talked about. I mean, they're just super sci-fi, physically possible, but yeah, very, very sci-fi. But yeah, chemical rockets are here to stay. But I think nuclear rockets, it seems inevitable they will take over deep space rocket missions and anything outside of Earth orbit will probably go mostly nuclear and then eventually even fusion once we got those. This VASIMIR with the killer power joining this marriage here between these two could be really a game changer that I hope you see in the next 10 to 15 years really, really take off.

S: Yeah, something like this is definitely going to be a game changer if we're ever going to be going to Mars and back, you know?

B: Yeah, yeah, I'm really getting optimistic about it because also you've got a lot of countries trying to control Cislunar space, the space between Earth and the moon. And it's not just like a science thing or a gee wow, how cool it. This is like a government control thing. We must control this parcel of space. So that means they're going to dump a lot of money into it. And so, and we've talked about this a bit before, so I think nuclear rockets, could be very common in Cislunar space, because you got to move material vast distances between the Earth and the moon very efficiently and very fast. And you're not going to do that with chemical rockets. So the governments are going to start pouring money into nuclear rockets and NASA has expressed interest in being part of that so that they can then take that technology, whether it's VASIMIR or some other type of nuclear rocketry, take that and expand on it so that it can go beyond the moon tomorrow. So we'll see it one way or the other, just a matter of when.

The LA Fires (36:42)[edit]

S: Cara, get us up to date on some of the science surrounding the LA fires.

C: OK. So first, I guess a little bit of an update just on the status of the fires because they are much more contained than they were when we talked last week. The fire that's closest to me, the Eaton Fire in Altadena, CA and Pasadena, CA, it is now 14,117 acres and 45% contained. And southwest of me, the Palisades Fire, which is larger at 23,713 acres is now 19% contained. We still don't have total numbers on how many structures have been destroyed. In terms of the death toll from the LA fires is 25 is the latest. So nine people in the Palisades fire, 16 people in the Eaton fire, but that number is is probably going to rise. Today was another Santa Ana extreme wind warning day. I think the hope is that things will continue to get better and better after this. So I wanted to talk about a few things that came up for me. I think part of this is sort of like a PSA, and part of it is obviously just keeping up with what's going on. But boots on the ground, these are the things that I recognized and that I found kind of important to focus on. The first one is I wanted to talk about this incredible app that if you live in LA, this has been your lifeline throughout this past week. It's called watch duty. If you don't have watch duty, I recommend that you download it. Right now it's only active in 22 states, but the plan is to become nationwide. And who knows, maybe it'll even go global eventually. This is an app that is very, very easy to use. It's a 5O1C3, so it's a nonprofit and it was co-founded by two individuals who really basically lived through a fire and recognized that it was just really hard to find information because different government agencies were posting things on different sites and some of the information wasn't coming out in real time. And if anybody knows when there's a disaster going on, how difficult it is to get up to date information and how easy it is to doom scroll, they would recognize why watch duty is so important. Is a map. It's a really clean, easy to read map that has every evac zone listed, whether it's a level 2 or level 3, whether it's a waiter a go. It shows the perimeter of the fire as soon as it's ready, it shows the containment. And then every press conference is summarized there. And there's a team of reporters who are vetted reporters who publish within the app when you click on the fires, the latest information. So there's a quote from one of the co-founders that said this is it came out of an idea that John had. He talked to me about it four years ago. We built the app in 60 days. It was run completely by volunteers, no full time staff. So side project for a lot of engineers. So the aim was to keep it as simple as possible. Now there are full time staff, but it's still very simple. There's no login, it doesn't scrape user data and it's completely free. You don't have to pay for it and there's no ads. And their view is we're never going to sell this thing. We will fundraise if we have to. This is a public service, so here's a quote from the other co-founder, Merritt. We view what we were doing as a public service. It is a utility that everyone should have which is timely, relevant information for their safety during emergencies. Right now it's very scattered. Even the agencies themselves, which have the best intentions, their hands are tied by bureaucracy or contracts. We partner with government sources with a focus on firefighting so they're able to get push delays out fast. Like 1.5 million people downloaded the thing in like a few days and it never crashed. Here's another quote that I think is a really important one, and this speaks to what we were talking about earlier. All information is vetted for quality over quantity. We have a code of conduct for reporters, for example we never report on injuries or give specific addresses. It's all tailored with a specific set of criteria. We do not editorialize. We report on what we have heard on the scanners. And this really did save lives. This app, we will probably after the fact be able to directly link it to saving lives because people were able to know when their evac zones were updated to the minute, which is a a rare experience in a disaster of this of this scale. Fire is fast, really fast. And the Santa Anas were blowing upwards of 90 plus mph. It shifted very quickly and in those first two days of the fire, the winds were too strong for air suppression. So this was just boots on the ground firefighting. It spread like wildfire as they say. Speaking of that, a friend of mine reached out to me during this whole thing. And she goes, can they use salt water to put out a fire? And I was like, I don't know. And then we just stop talking about it. And then a day later, I saw that the super scoopers were here. And I was like, OK, this is interesting. I want to dig a little bit deeper. So after the winds calmed down a couple days into the fire, these pilots flew planes. They're called super scoopers. And what they do is they skim 1500 gallons of seawater out of the ocean. They just fly down to the surface of the ocean, skim the seawater and then go dump it on the fires just like they would freshwater or fire retardant. I had never seen or heard of this before. And so I found an interesting article online that was written by some researchers who are studying how high saline water effects inland ecosystems. Because it seems like a really obvious answer, right? The coast was burning. The fire spread literally to the shoreline, and all the houses along the shoreline in the Pacific Palisades and many in Malibu burned to the ground. So there's so much water right there. The hydrants were at certain points, they couldn't keep the pressure up and they just weren't able to deliver the water because they're trying to fight basically a wildfire using a civic water system, which is not what it's built for. Why not use seawater? So it seems really obvious, but apparently there are some real downsides to this. I mean, we had to do it, but there are some real downsides. What do you guys think is a big one?

E: Corrosion.

C: Yeah. So not only is it corroding some of these firefighting systems, the firefighting equipment itself, but these researchers indicate that it may harm ecosystems.

B: That's what I was thinking.

C: And we're starting to see this as a problem more and more, not just in in these urban wildfire scenarios, but also as climate change brings coastlines higher and deeper. Ecosystems that were never exposed to saltwater are now getting higher salinity, or they're finding themselves in higher salinity environments. And excessive salts can stress and kill plants. So these researchers did an experiment called Tempest where they went into these forests basically, and they added different salinities of water. They did it over the course of several years. They first did a 10 hour exposure of salty water that was a little bit more brackish, and they found that like it didn't really affect the forest. The next year they exposed it for 20 hours and the forest was mostly OK, but some of the Poplar trees were like acting a little funny. They started drawing water too slowly. And then the next year they did a 30 hour exposure, but something major shifted that year and that's that the rains didn't come. So what they think happened is that a lot of that salt was never washed away and things went south after the 30 hour exposure and the lack of rain. A lot of the trees started to brown in mid August instead of late September. The forest canopy was bare by mid-September like it was already winter. So it just the forest switched over much earlier. And then they also found that the water that was draining through the soils was brown instead of clear. So it wasn't maintaining its typical filtration capabilities. It was absorbing all sorts of clays and silts and different particulates and taking it with it, which could have intense downstream effects because you didn't have the water system operating as normal. So these researchers, they still don't know what the downstream effects of salt dumping on areas that aren't used to salt water will have, but they have a feeling that it's going to be large. And so that's going to be something that we're going to have to look out for here in, in SoCal because, yes, large areas of forest and urban water supplies were overrun with saltwater because of these super scoopers, but they also put out the fires. And that's really important. And what else are we going to be cleaning up for a while? But we shouldn't clean up right now. That is the ash and the pollution. And so that's the last thing I wanted to touch on is these deadly downstream risks from these fires. So if you live in LA, even if you were far from the fires, you are dealing with hazardous air right now. And there's a lot of chatter about even if the AQI looks good, don't take that number at face value, not because it's not measuring what it says it's measuring, but it doesn't measure some of the things that are threatening to Angelenos right now. So AQI, air quality index, is a measure of how hazardous the air is outside to breathe. It's a measure of of pollution. And it factors in a lot of different variables. One of the big ones is that 2.5 PM. You guys have heard of this? You see it on air filters sometimes. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Yeah, right. Well, no, the PM is actually just particulate matter.

B: Oh wow, yeah, PM, not PPM.

C: OK, yeah, not PPM, PM, so PM 2.5. You'll also sometimes see PM 10, like I have two Dyson air filters that I bought after the last fire when things were really smoky and they give you a bunch of different readings. I'm trying to think of all the things they tell you, like the ozone maybe, but the first 2 are always PM 2.5 and PM 10. So that stands for particulate matter 2.5 microns or less and particulate matter 10 microns or less. Today when you look outside, it looks clear. The smoke is not as nearly as thick, and sometimes people go, oh, it looks clear, it must be healthy. The scary thing is the things that are the most dangerous for you, you can't see them because they're small. So something that is a 2.5 PM, which is so smaller than 2.5 microns can enter your lungs. Sometimes they're so small that they can enter your bloodstream directly through your lungs. Larger particles, PM 10 or larger, they're usually caught by your nasal epithelium. They're usually caught by your throat before they get into your respiratory tract or your bloodstream. And very often when we look at AQI, there's a combination of factors that go into the algorithm for calculating AQI. Certain things that are in the air right now from these fires are not even measured by an AQI index. So when a house that was built in 1920 goes up in flames, you can expect asbestos, volatiles from paint, plastics, a lot of different plastic. Because it's not just the house, right? It's all the furniture, it's the varnishes, it's the adhesives that we're using. It's every single thing. And that's becoming like aerosolized. And it's spreading for miles. So I mentioned this last week, but I think it bears repeating. At its worst where I live in my house, the AQI was 375.

B: What's normal for you?

C: Good healthy air is between 0 and 50. Zero to 50 means that's satisfactory. You can go outside fine. 50 to 100 is semi normal in Los Angeles. That means that it's acceptable. They call it moderate, but there may be a risk for people who have like asthma or other respiratory sensitivities. 100 to 150. Now we're talking unhealthy for sensitive groups. We sometimes see this in LA when the smog is very, very thick. So sensitive groups may experience health effects, but the general public may not notice. 150 to 200 unhealthy. That's the label that's used. Flat out unhealthy. All of last week we never did below this. So every time even when we had a good air day, it was like 161-170. 200 to 300. Very unhealthy. This is a health alert. The risk of health effects is increased for everyone, and then 300 plus is called hazardous. That's when they show you the icon of the gas mask and they say health warning of emergency conditions. Everyone is more likely to be affected. So at its worst on I think it was Tuesday of last week, it might have been Wednesday, the AQI was 375 and hovering between 350 and 375 for several hours most of the day. It smelled like a campfire on the ground floor of my house. And when you walked outside, you would immediately cough or sneeze. So obviously, I'm still not leaving the house without an N95. And that is the public guidance right now is to wear a respirator when you leave the house, even if the AQI looks low. Because even if those 2.5 PMS aren't being picked up, there may be volatiles in the air that aren't measured by AQI. So it's very, very important to remember that the fires are still burning. There's still a lot in the air. The ash on the ground is toxic. The ash on the ground is the large particulate matter that was made from houses, furniture and cars burning. This is not a wildfire, it's a wild urban fire. So the things that were burning were not just trees. And we have to remember that. There's guidance right now. You cannot use leaf blowers in Los Angeles. Do not think that it is safe to take a leaf blower or even a broom to sweep all that ash off of your property. You're putting it right back into the air. It's very, very dangerous. Here is an expert in the health effects of air pollution at UC San Diego said that Los Angeles in particular saw air pollution levels that could be raising daily mortality by between 5 and 15% just due to the air pollution alone from these fires. And obviously people with respiratory sensitivity as children and older adults are more vulnerable. So be smart. Wear respirator when you go outside. Wear your N90 fives. I know you have a stash leftover from COVID. I don't think my house without one, even if it seems kind of clearer in these past couple of days. The fires are still burning. The winds are still shifting and we still don't know. That's the thing. We don't know the long term effects because usually when we study the health effects of wildfire exposure, it's a one and done or it's once and then again 10 years later. But when we're getting hit by wildfires in the same area and they're wild/urban fires and you're getting multiple exposures a year, that's going to change things a lot. Here is a lovely quote from Doctor Lisa Patel, a pediatrician in San Francisco Bay and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. She said we are breathing in this toxic brew of volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and hexavalent chromium. All of it is noxious.

S: Yeah, one of the things that I heard reported was that the fire got so hot that the water pipes were melting or breaking and therefore water was leaking from a lot of locations, which was further reducing the water pressure and frustrating attempts at obviously controlling the fire. Like that's not a thing that you you deal with in a wildfire.

C: No, you never do, and you wouldn't be tapping a urban hydrants and a wildfire. They're not built for that. They're not built to all be tapped at the same time.

B: Right, exactly.

S: They're like one building, that one building is on fire.

C: And so that's why I think it's so frustrating because everybody's upset, everybody's angry. But it's really heartbreaking being here in the city and seeing all the chatter that's like, it's your fault. It's your fault. It's all you're hearing right now, not so much within the city, but from outside, kind of pointing fingers at LA and saying, well, if this hadn't happened, this wouldn't have happened. Here's the thing. Climate change is real. The humidity outside right now is 25%. It hasn't rained so far this rainy season. You know, usually by January it's rained. We talked about this last week. Fire season is usually summer, a little bit spring, a little fall. Santa Ana season is usually winter, a little bit spring, a little bit fall. The problem is when the Santa Anas come, but fire season never left because we didn't get any rain. So now at the winds are at their worst, and it's as dry as it's ever been outside. It's a recipe for disaster. And that's what's happening right now.

E: Perfect storm.

C: Yeah. And we do not have a wildfire water system in the middle of the Pacific Palisades.

E: Show me the city or the place on the earth that can handle something like this.

C: Exactly.

E: I don't know it.

S: All right. Thanks, Cara.

Building Materials for Storing Carbon (54:25)[edit]

S: All right guys, this is an interesting news item. Researchers did an analysis of how much carbon could we store in building materials, realistically, and could this have any kind of significant impact on our net carbon. So the idea is, this is carbon sequestration, right? We spoke about many times, we could reduce the amount of carbon that we're releasing into the environment, but unless we get it down to 0, we're still going to be increasing the amount of carbon. And further, we're never going to be decreasing it unless we can get it to be negative. The only way to do that is to pull carbon out of the air, out of the environment and then store it in some kind of long term way. It doesn't have to be a permanent permanent, but it should be hundreds of years at least, right? You want to take it out of circulation. So growing trees is one way to store carbon. Trees take carbon out of the air and store it in solid form. But they give that carbon back when they rot or burn or whatever. So that's medium term-ish like a long lived tree might help for the target.

E: Artificial trees that that won't die. They'll hold the carbon.

S: Yeah, or we talked about just burying the trees, you know?

E: Yeah, right.

B: More sequoias.

S: But burying carbon in some form uses up land. It may have environmental impacts and there's a lot of logistical issues with that. But what if we could store the carbon in stuff. Stuff that we're making anyway that's going to exist anyway? We're not burying it. We're just building stuff out of it.

E: Right, as long as it's non disposable, right, so long like you said that lasts the long time.

S: They have to be things that last for a long time.

C: Like roads.

E: Long lifetime.

S: Yeah, road. So asphalt is one, another is concrete, right?

E: Well. Concrete, yeah, but you have to make a lot of carbon to make concrete.

S: Yeah, that's the whole point. You got to make a lot of carbon and we want to do that. We want to store carbon in these large scale things. Also wood, obviously. What we could do it just by growing trees or by making wood like products. And plastics, plastic like stuff you can make out of carbon and brick, basically things that are bricks, so cement, asphalt, plastics, wood and brick. So if we took those building materials, how much material do you think that is?

E: You mean in terms of how much carbon it could?

S: No, no in terms just how much does all that stuff weigh? How many tons of stuff is that per year do we make of concrete, asphalt, plastics, wood and brick?

E: Holy moly.

B: 4.

E: 4 trillion? I don't know. I have no idea.

S: Yeah, couple orders of magnitude about. So is it more than 30 billion.

E: Thirty billion.

S: Thirty billion, right. How much carbon do we release into the atmosphere every year?

B: 4.

E: More than 30 billion.

S: This year we had a new record. 40 billion tons.

E: So-

S: 40 giga tons. Yeah, so-

E: Not good.

S: Right. So what if most of that stuff was built out of carbon that we were sequestering?

E: That'd be nice.

S: We're on the same order of magnitude as the amount that is being released. Of CO2 that's been released. Obviously we want to get that amount down. If we can get that 40 billion tons down to 10 billion tons or 5 billion tons. Obviously the goal is to get to quote unquote net zero. But that last bit is going to be really hard. Even if we can get down to 5 billion tons of carbon that we're releasing every year, but what if we could sequester 10 billion tons, right? Then we could actually be net carbon negative for a bit until we settle into pre industrial levels or somewhere between where we are now and pre industrial levels.

E: Yeah.

S: Somewhere before the climate started to go haywire.

B: How do we grab all that stuff?

E: Yeah, how?

S: Yeah, so there's a couple of questions here. One is how do we get a hold of that carbon in the first place?

B: Isn't that the the hardest part of this?

S: Yes, yeah, it is. And the second part is how do we make it into these types of materials. Once you do, if you could make mostly carbon concrete, which actually is strong.

B: Sounds strong.

S: If you could make carbon nano fibers and infuse that into the concrete. Actually we've talked about this before. It actually gives you very strong concrete. Same thing what carbon based plastics are, and also good and wood is wood, right? This is the matter of using wood in in a way treating it so that it lasts for hundreds of years, not tens of years, for example. And brick is rock, so you just make a brick that has a lot of carbon. So the what the analysis they did was, realistically, given the methods that we have today, if we tried to store as much carbon as possible in these materials, how much could we store? It's obviously not 30 billion, because these things are not going to be pure carbon, but they estimated that it would be 16.6 ± 2.8 billion tons. So we're talking roughly 16-17 billion tons of carbon per year. That's pretty good.

B: That's a lot.

S: Yeah.

E: Not insignificant.

S: That's about half of the CO2 emissions that we had in 2021. Again, we're higher than that now. So again, if we can get down to that, that is significant. That's huge. That would significantly reduce our net carbon and makes it very plausible that we could get to net negative or net zero at least. If we get down to 10 to 15 billion tons of carbon per year, then we could do that. So, what are some methods for getting the carbon in the first place? The easiest method is growing stuff, right? That plants are the most efficient method we have of taking carbon out of the air and putting it into solid form.

E: Tried and true.

B: Biotechnology, baby.

S: But it uses space, right? It uses either land or water to do that. And as we've discussed many times, we're pretty much using all of our land to grow food. You know, we don't have the amount of vast tracts of land to convert into carbon sequestration. But you could use waste biomass, right? You take all that biomass that is not edible, that is not food, but that would otherwise be waste. And you convert that into carbon that can be used in cement or brick or made into plastic or whatever. So those are the processes that they're talking about. Then there are other sources of CO2 as well, ash and whatnot that you can use. Now the trickiest one, of course, is like directly pulling CO2 out of the air.

B: I love that option.

S: It sounds the sexiest, but of course it uses energy, so it depends on where that energy is coming from. You can't burn fossil fuel to run the process. You have to use solar power or wind power or water power or whatever.

B: Or nuclear power.

S: Or even nuclear power. But the problem is doing that to scale, we can do it. You can do it. Just not to the industrial scale necessary to be really significant. So, but there's a basically we're talking about biomass, that's going to be the primary mechanism of getting carbon into this material. So again, this is a thought experiment kind of study where they're just doing the math, say, does it add up? Is it feasible? How much are we talking about here? And the numbers look good. You just got to do it. You know, we have to build the infrastructure and the technology to do this and do it on a massive scale. I do think something like this is going to be necessary. It's going to be extremely hard to get to net 0, and just getting close isn't enough, right? We're still going to be adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. You know, we haven't even turned the corner yet, and we're talking about doing this. We haven't even reduced the amount by which we're increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. That's still going up. But then partly because we are increasing the percentage of our energy that's coming from low CO2 sources, but we're increasing the amount of energy we're using more, right? And that's probably going to continue to be the case between now and 2050-2060 when we're supposed to hit net zero. That's why if you look at it, what percentage of our power is from renewable energy? It's going up, it's great. But we're still burning as much if not more fossil fuel than we ever had because our energy demand is coming up too. So we have to increase renewables and low carbon sources significantly more than we're increasing our energy demand, which probably not going to do with wind and solar alone. That's why we need nuclear. It's just not going to happen without nuclear.

E: It has to be the big part of it.

B: Space nukes, baby.

E: There you go, Bob.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:05:31)[edit]

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

J: All right guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] All right, well, while you're trying to figure out what the hell that is, I did get some people guessing. A listener named Beth Urlacher said. Hi Jay, my 10 year old son Aiden wanted to guess this week's noisy, he thinks it's an old excavator toy that that talks. Oh, then she gave me the pronunciation. It's Earl Locker. Earl Locker. Stavis Maples said this week's noisy is someone trying to start a truck. This was most likely be correct in some way. Another person Visto Tutti, this noisy is is bizarre. I can only think that it's the sound of a Japanese vending machine with synthesized voice. I don't hear that anything like that in there. That's a very interesting guess. Michael Blaney wrote in and said Hi Jay, hmm, it's kind of reminds me of when I turn off my handheld vacuum cleaner. The powering down of the motor makes a really weird sci-fi like recharge sound. So I guess that's my guess. It's a small electric motor powering down. And then the final guess was from EvilEye, a pull string toy like the old farmer says thing and the spring inside breaking or recoiling inside. It had the dial on the outside that pointed to the to the animal. I used to love that.

E: Oh yeah.

J: I get that. No guess on this one, guys, and this was, I knew that this one was very hard, but it's a cool sound. I'll play it again, see if this stirs anything in any of you guys. [plays Noisy] All right, let me walk you through it. What's the first thing that you hear?

B: Scratching?

E: Some scratchy thing.

J: All right, listen again.

C: Birds.

J: What's that whooshy sound? Try again. Forget the tweaking the birds and stuff. What's the whooshy sound?

E: Snow, like someone's scraping something.

B: Something rotating around.

J: All right, I'll tell you what it is. Listen again.

B: Tell me.

J: All right, that's fire.

E: Fire?

J: OK.

C: Doesn't sound like fire.

J: Now listen again to the whole thing. All right, what's the high pitched noise?

C: A child?

J: A child. (chuckles)

C: Sounds like somebody going haaa.

B: Yeah, it does.

J: All right.

B: Sounds a little human, but-

J: You may have seen a video of the-

C: Fireplace like the Huihu Huihu things.

J: No.

B: Gas in the wood burning?

J: No, that was last week.

B: Thought it sounded familiar.

J: OK, so I've seen videos of people doing this many, many times. It's pretty interesting. What they do is they'll use fuels, some kind of fuel to re-inflate a flat tire, right? So they're lighting the fuel, it catches on fire it the fuel goes inside the tire and then the gas that it produces expands really fast and it actually can take a completely flat and even almost a tire that's not completely touching the rim and it'll re inflate it.

E: I've seen videos of that. It's pretty incredible.

J: Yeah, and it and it grips the the the rim again.

E: Looks dangerous.

B: Oh yeah.

J: I bet you there's lots of ways that that can go wrong. So it's really cool. You could definitely look this up. If you've never seen it, I really suggest that you do it because it is a a pretty impressive thing. Here it is one last time. [plays Noisy]

E: I would have never guessed that sound was that.

B: Still not seeing it but OK.

J: So that that ping noise, that high pitched ping noise is the actual air expanding inside the wheel well and then the tire re-gripping onto the rim. Very cool. And no winner. I knew it was hard, but I think it's an instructional who's that noisy. Because it's something you can learn about. A listener named Corey Hawes sent in this new Noisy. And I hope you guys like it. [plays Noisy] If you guys think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, e-mail me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.


J: Few quick repeat announcements here. NOTACON 2025. It's going to be awesome. We talk about it all the time because we went to the last one and we all loved it. It was highly regaled as the absolute best thing that Steven Novella has ever done over the course of 2 1/2 days, and Steve's lack of response is proof of that.

C: I think he was only there 1 1/2 days, wasn't he?

E: That's right, yeah.

J: It was an intense 1 1/2 days. No, he came two hours late and we busted two hours mercilessly.

C: Yeah, we did. We rewrote history.

E: Critical two hours.

J: Let me tell you, when Steve walked in late after I busted his stones for two hours. He walks in, everybody looks at him and starts laughing right in his face. It was awesome. It was awesome.

J: And then Steve gets this nervous smile on his face like. Oh, what did I?

E: Why did I walk in? What did I walk into or what did Jay do?

J: Anyway, please join us to NOTACON 2025. We have a Beatles theme this year. We will definitely be doing a Beatles sing along on Saturday night led by George Hrab. There will be lots of surprises during that sing along, so please do consider coming. You can talk to people on the SGU Discord if you're interested. If you're looking for a roommate or share a ride, go to notaconcon.com or go to theskepticsguide.org and there's a link to it on our homepage. You could join the SGU mailing list, go to the SGU homepage for that. Every week we give a list of everything that we've done the previous week, and it's definitely worth getting because there's some humor in there and the word of the week and lots of other pieces of information that you might like. So please consider joining our mailing list. Please give us a show rating on whatever podcast player you're using. This helps new people find our podcast. And last but not least, please consider becoming an SGU patron. You could do this by going to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide. It's pretty damn obvious why it's more important now than ever in the past 20 years of the SGU, so if you're interested in helping us out in in any way in this, it could be a dollar a month. Any contribution would help. Go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide.

S: Thank you, Jay. Well, we have a great interview coming up with Nick Tiller. So let's go to that interview now.

Interview with Nick Tiller (1:12:29)[edit]

https://www.nbtiller.com/

S: We are joined now by Doctor Nick Tiller. Nick, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.

Nick Tiller: Hi, it's great to be talking to you guys. Very excited. A long time listener to the show so I'm super excited to be chatting with you all.

S: Thanks. So Nick, you are an exercise scientist and a science communicator promoting sort of critical thinking in the exercise in sports medicine realm. We actually met when we were at CSICon and you and I had a little bit of overlap in our time in Dubai recently. So I did get to eat you in person. Yeah, that was nice. We had wonderful food, though, that that restaurant. I mean, it was.

Nick Tiller: We had some great food there.

S: Yeah, it was really good. I love Middle Eastern food, but it's like, it's like saying I like European food, you know what I mean? Like it's, there's so many different kinds.

Nick Tiller: Actually just just on that trip to Dubai Steve and I were out there and I think Steve, you and I had very similar experiences with this group. You know, this group of sort of young entrepreneurs CEOs and we were talking about critical thinking and I was talking more about critical thinking overlapping with exercise science. And they were such a fantastic group, just so tuned in. So they were asking so many fantastic astute questions and there's a three hour workshop and they were absolutely clued in from the first slide to the last slide. That was a really pleasurable experience for me.

S: Yeah, they were like the perfect audience because as you said, they were very engaged, very smart, very clued in, but were completely naive to the whole critical thinking angle, you know what I mean? So like, it was all new to them, pretty much. So, yeah, very receptive, great questions. But I could tell them anything from my third past 30 years of skepticism, and they never heard it before. So let's talk about the work that you've been doing. You've published a book called The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Medicine. Tell us about that. What topics do you cover in that book?

Nick Tiller: Yeah, well, I hasten to add that the title is really-I named it in tribute to the SGU and I wrote about in the introduction to the book how I found the SGU and you guys acted as my gateway into scientific skepticism and critical thinking. And I came up with the idea for the book when I was doing my PhD. This was back in 2011. My PhD was focused on human applied Physiology with a specialism in respiratory medicine and I was a poor, broke student at the time. And so to make ends meet, I started to write for mainstream science outlets and I wrote two articles. One was the follow up to the second and they were called Myths and Fallacies of Sports Science Part 1 and Part 2. And I just thought this is something that I'm interested in. It combines my personal passion for scientific scepticism with my professional work in applied exercise Physiology, and I got really positive feedback from that. And it occurred to me that nobody's really doing this. Nobody is trying to bridge the gap, this huge void between critical thinking and exercise science or health and fitness more broadly. And that was sort of the, I guess that was sowing the seeds of the book. And then about eight years later, the Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science was published. And so that's essentially what I tried to do. That is the book's thesis is to bridge the gap between critical thinking and exercise science. There's a big golf there. It's there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

S: Yeah, it's not just like a lack of critical thinking. There's an active industry of misinformation in the wellness, exercise, dieting space that we're confronting. It's not just how people don't really understand. They're being lied to. They're being given misinformation. So tell what's the biggest kind of misinformation you encounter in that area?

Nick Tiller: Well, I think very specifically I guess it's about, I think nutrition is one of those areas that everybody thinks is very important because it is. And everybody thinks that they know a little bit about nutrition. But actually it's probably one of those areas that is most misunderstood and mostly misappropriated as well. Because under nutrition you have fad diets, you have dietary supplements, you have performance enhancing supplements as well. And so that's a huge can of worms. But I think speaking more broadly, the entire health and wellness industry hinges on this idea that there is some kind of quick fix, there is some kind of shortcut, there is some magic equation that we have to unlock. The number of times that I've been asked, Nick, what what's the secret to being in shape? What's the secret to health, to true health and wellness and it's like, well, how do you even it's like asking Evan, like Evan, how do you do your taxes? It's like, what do you what you want me to summarize that in a thirty second sound bite? I mean, it's complicated, but inevitably when you say to people, look, that the secret is that there is no secret. You have to eat well, don't drink, don't smoke and exercise every day. I mean, that's the secret equation. But of course, we are primed in health and wellness to want a quick fix, some kind of magic supplement, a special exercise program. You know, they want me to tell them that if they eat grapefruits every day, they'll lose weight. Or they just do an ice plunge every day and it'll boost your immune system. But the human body is a little bit more complicated than that, unfortunately.

B: Yeah, there's no nothing quick. It's just hard work and consistency. In my experience, though, if you don't have two of those, especially consistency, that's when I've seen some of my biggest gains throughout my life is like when you could stick with it. Find something you enjoy, even if it's not the optimal, like this is the best cardio that you could possibly do. It's the most efficient. It doesn't matter. Because if it's the most efficient and best for you, but you don't do it, then it's not helpful at all. But if it's something that's like maybe not as awesomely efficient as cross country skiing or something like that, but it's something that you enjoy, you're going to stick with it and just do something that you enjoy that moves your body. If the studies have showed anything, it's like you don't have to do a lot. It doesn't take that much to have a noticeable benefit to your health. Just move around.

Nick Tiller: I couldn't agree more. It's adherence, everything, it comes down to adherence and and if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to adhere to it. You know, some people try going to the gym and they hate going to the gym. OK, well, don't go to the gym. You know, some people try and go running and they hate it. OK. Just it doesn't matter what you do, just move. The more you move, the better. And once you start seeing those benefits, whether they're cardiovascular benefits or people are losing weight or they're getting stronger. Whatever it happens to be, you'll be motivated to continue once you start seeing benefits. But yeah, you're not going to keep doing it unless you enjoy it. So enjoyment is the key there.

E: Nick, only because you mentioned it, you said ice baths and I was going to bring up Wim Hof to see if you've done research in regards to him. You know, Dutch extreme athlete famous for his ability to withstand extreme coal and he has some a method that he I guess sells to people. If you follow his routine, it will lead you to better results. Any truth to this?

Nick Tiller: Well, generally speaking, most people will engage in some kind of like ice bathing or ice dunking or some kind of cold water immersion, not just because they think that it's going to improve their recovery or boost their immune system, but because it fits into a lifestyle, right? And most of the time in health and wellness, you're very rarely selling somebody what a particular product, you're selling them a lifestyle, you're selling them a way to shape their own personal identity. So that's kind of the best way that I can describe Wim Hofer's. In most cases, it's not going to do harm. There are going to be some instances where people, they have some kind of pre-existing cardiovascular disease that they didn't know about. Maybe they shouldn't be ice dunking and cold shock is a real thing so there's always this risk of overt harm. But most people use ice bathing because it's entrenched in the exercise culture and definitely sporting culture. People think that it's actually facilitates recovery. And it all comes back to this idea that when you have an injury that you should stick ice on the injury because it reduces the inflammation. That in itself has been contested a bunch of times because inflammation isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to repairing an injury. But you know, there's more and more research now that shows with ice bathing specifically that it, if anything, it actually inhibits recovery. It actually suppresses muscle protein synthesis and it suppresses anabolic signalling in the muscle. So if you have like a hard workout, if you're especially if you're an athlete, and then you go and sit in a cold tub or an ice bath for 10 minutes, it's actually going to slow your rate of recovery. So contrary to popular belief, but this is an activity now that is so entrenched in sport and exercise culture that I don't think any amount of evidence is ever going to change that, unfortunately.

E: Yeah, I agree.

J: Isn't that ironic, right? It's like the exact opposite. So you said it slows it down, but eventually the the same level of recovery will be achieved, right?

Nick Tiller: Right. Yeah, I think I understand the question. You mean like if you wait for long enough, then you'll recover back to baseline level? Well, yes and no. Because you think if somebody's exercising regularly, especially if they're a high performance athlete, they might be training twice a day, three times a day. And actually if they're blunting the rate at which they recover after each training session, that could have cumulative effects on recovery. So there's nothing to say that actually they'll rebound back to baseline levels. Ice bathing, if you're interested in repairing the muscle tissue after hard exercise, hard training, then definitely don't go on ice bath. And it's unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg, pun intended, because a lot of people say that we should be using ice baths to boost immunity and because it promotes healing and it protects from cancer and it and it can protect you from COVID-19. I mean, if you can think it, people will make those claims.

S: It says on your website, you have a couple other books coming out, one called The Health and Wellness Lie. And we talked a little bit about this when we were together, like wellness, like the whole idea of wellness basically is a scam, like the entire industry. So tell us about some of the things that you've you've confronted in the wellness industry that that gets you going the most.

Nick Tiller: Yeah, thanks for bringing up the book. So this, this hopefully will be published early next year and it's going to be published in the US with John Hopkins University Press in the UK and Europe with a Bloomsbury publishing of Harry Potter fame. And the Health and Wellness lies. Basically, it's a thesis on this idea that everything we know, everything we think we know about health and wellness has basically been dictated to us by an industry that doesn't actually care for our health or our wellness. So that could be the fact that when somebody wants to lose weight, they go on a fad diet and what happens? They lose a little bit of weight in the opening weeks or months of the diet. The thing isn't sustainable in the long term. Inevitably, they regain all of the weight that they've lost. 1/3 of people that follow a fad diet actually gain more weight than they originally lost. So they end up weighing more than they did at the start. And then they just bounce from one fad diet to the next, engaging in what we call yo-yo dieting. And it has really negative long term effects on cardiovascular health. When people want to improve their immune function, they'll start taking supplements. When people want to improve their recovery, they'll have cupping and they'll have acupuncture and they'll do ice bathing and they'll do all this stuff because that's what they think they need to do because that's what's been dictated to them by the industry. So it's really an expose of the health and wellness industry, the incentives underpinning the industry and teaching people, making sure that there's a thread of critical thinking in there. I don't want to be too heavy-handed with the critical thinking stuff because there are people already doing that. You know, you guys obviously are at the top of the pile here. But making sure that if people do have health and wellness goals, that they have a pretty good idea about how to accomplish those. So how to make good decisions and health and wellness and navigate this the Wild West of wellness without getting ripped off essentially.

J: You know, that makes me think that they throw a lot of ideas at the wall and then whichever ones seem to be popular or gaining popularity, then they just lean into it, right? This because this whole idea about using cold as a after workout treatment, the fact that there is no real science behind it means it's all hype. And that is the trend because I think in the end it's all about making money and having something to talk about.

Nick Tiller: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. At the end of the day, this is a business. The health and wellness industry is worth over $4 trillion worldwide, right? That's more than the smartphone industry, the fast food industry and all social media platforms combined, right? In fact, it's worth double all of those entities combined. So this is big business and the reason that it's worth so much money is because everybody is interested in health and wellness at some level. And as you said, whatever is trending at the time, people will lean into and the people who operate within the health and wellness industry are interested in one thing and that's making money, that's profits. And whether that's manufacturers, whether that's vendors who are selling the products, whether it's wellness gurus and fitness influencers online, they're more than happy to sell their followers quick fixes and supplements and diets and core training programs and garments and sneakers and powders, pills and potions, because it promotes engagement. And once they get engagement on something, it can be monetized. So it really does all come back to the bottom line. It's about making money, but that doesn't help the end user who actually wants to lose weight to reduce the their risk of cardiovascular disease or they want to improve their cardiovascular fitness or they want to reduce their back pain or whatever their health and wellness goals happen to be. So it really is an industry that has prioritised profits above the outcomes for the end user. And that's something that I don't think we'll ever reverse it, but at least we can, I'm trying to do my bit at least to help the consumers to actually make good decisions for themselves. They need to act as their own content regulators because nobody's going to do it for them, right?

S: Yeah, absolutely. That's the world we're living in now. And in my personal assessment, about 99% of that industry ranges somewhere between worthless and harmful. Like you have like this massive industry that's doing nothing for anybody except enriching the snake oil salesman, right? I mean, how many diet books actually are giving people good advice versus honestly, like what most people need to know about their diet you could put in a pamphlet and that's probably all people have the bandwidth for it anyway. And yet there's like, how many books have been written about it, just with utter nonsense.

Nick Tiller: Yeah, I mean, you just need to look at the the profits from the diet and weight loss industry, right. They've been going up for decades, now at an all time high. I think that that sector of the industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And so these profits have been going up and up at an all time high. And what else has been going up and up? The rates of obesity. Now, the rates of obesity have been climbing since the 1970s, going up exponentially now since COVID shows no sign of yielding. And people don't often enough stop and ask themselves, how can profits from diet and weight loss be going up and rates of obesity also be going up? That doesn't make any sense. There's obviously a mismatch. There's obviously some kind of detachment between the two entities and what it basically comes down to is what we're investing in, what we're spending our money on in diet and weight loss. It obviously isn't working, so we need to try something different.

S: At the very least, no one has found the hack, right? The one easy trick or the secret to losing weight or maintaining a low weight. Because if they did-

J: You say that you mean the easy, like an easy way.

S: That's waht I mean by a hack or a secret or a trick.

B: What about Ozempic? That's kind of easy.

S: Ozempic, that's science, man. That's a drug that works.

B: Right? Right?

S: Say what you will, it freaking works. You know, I mean, it's it's expensive. And if you go off of it, you probably will gain the weight back. That's the downside. But if the entire like dieting industry, all the different diets that that have come up, if any of them actually worked, they would have staying power, they would be persistent, everybody would be doing it, recommending it, etcetera. But there's just this, yeah, there's just never ending treadmill of different fad diets. None of them at the end of the day work as you say, anything you do, it's like you go from not paying attention to your diet to paying attention to your diet. You going to lose a little weight probably. And like 95% of people will lose weight and then 95% of people will gain it back, usually more. In fact, some experts, you tell me if you agree with this or not. You know, I would argue that dieting is a failed strategy. It's it's about lifestyle factors, not going on a diet. Anything you go on, you can come off of as opposed to this is my healthy habits for life, right?

Nick Tiller: Well, I sort of express it in the idea of this, this wagon everybody talks about I fell off the wagon. As soon as you conceive the idea of a wagon, you're primed to fall off it there in the path to true weight loss and sustained weight loss. there is no wagon. There cannot be a wagon. It's just about making, it's about changing your lifestyle. This has to be something and the, and what I write about in the health and wellness lie is this idea that when you're starting this new, I don't never call it a diet. I call it a nutritional strategy or whatever it happens to be. You have to ask yourself, is this something I can do forever? If the answer is well, I'm not sure, then it's not going to work because as Steve said, you can go on a juice fast, you'll lose weight because you're in a massive calorie deficit, but you're going to be malnourished and you're not going to maintain it for for longer than a couple of weeks or a month. So any kind of diet is not going to work.

B: If there's a wagon, you better be pushing it.

Nick Tiller: Yeah, exactly.

J: Nick, that's the statement that dieters hear. And it's like they fearfully step back from it because we wanted to be like, hey, I'm going to do this temporarily. I'm going to lose weight and then I will continue from there and just stay at that weight and eat what I want. And I do get it because it sounds like it's very hard to make lifestyle changes. And I think every human, like most people inherently agree with that. It's hard, I'm going to change this forever. I'm going to eat one dessert a month or something like that. To some people that's impossible. And I think that's the fear, right? That statement means that it's not temporary discomfort and then everything's back to normal. It's a permanent change that you could live with that becomes normal to you.

Nick Tiller: Yeah. And and this is the fundamental problem with if there is a, there are several problems with Ozempic, but this is one of the problems with Ozempic and related drugs or we go view is that semaglutide is obviously the drug. And that is the studies where people have taken semaglutide and they've lost a lot of weight, as soon as they stop taking the drug, they regain most or all of the weight that they've lost. And that is because when physicians prescribe the drug, they are not prescribing it alongside dietary advice and advice on how to maintain the weight loss in the long term. So people become dependent on the drug, which is among other things than appetite suppressor. And it doesn't matter if you suppress your appetite through some semaglutide or if you just have good discipline or you go on a health kick and you lose the weight. If you don't know how to strategize in the long term and if you don't have the basic understanding of healthy eating and physical activity to maintain that weight loss long term, you're just going to regain the weight. So it doesn't matter if it's a diet, if it's a drug or if it's an exercise program. There has to be some kind of long term strategy and everything that we know about health and wellness, we know that it undermines those strategies that are aimed at long term sustainability. It is all about the short term quick fix buyer hack that that people can buy into. Because at the end of the day, we've evolved for economy, right? We haven't evolved to strategize in the long term to get long term sustainable results. So as I've said, whether that's Ozempic or a diet or an exercise program, there has to be a long term strategy otherwise it's not going to work.

S: Let me push back on one thing though that you said there, Nick. So you shouldn't assume categorically that physicians are not teaching patients long term diet strategies. So Ozempic, remember, first and foremost, it's a diabetes drug. It's a diabetes drug that also helps you lose weight. But, and I'm telling you, physicians who manage diabetes do have entire staff working for them that do nothing but advise people on their diet and tell people how to have a diabetic diet. That is absolutely part and parcel of standard of care management. Same thing even if you get like bypass surgery for a gastric bypass to lose weight, they absolutely, part of that is going on a diet and they will tell you straight up, this is not going to make you lose weight by itself. I mean, it will to some extent, but this has to be part of a healthy lifestyle in addition to that, it's not a magic solution. So at least that's the standard of care. That's what I've experienced being at an academic institution. I'm not saying there aren't some people out there just writing prescriptions without doing comprehensive care. You know, you'll see everything in medicine. But you know, there is this sense that, yeah, doctors just write prescriptions, but they don't do that. It's really, really not true. If you're a diabetes doctor, you spent a lot of your time advising patients on how to have a healthy diet. Just like even me as like a headache doctor, I spent a lot of time advising my patients on their lifestyle factors, including their diet and how that relates to their headaches. That's always step one actually, I do that before anything else. This narrative that physicians don't do that is simply not true.

Nick Tiller: Well, I suppose in the cases where people have been prescribed Ozempic or Semaglutide Wegovy and it hasn't helped them in the long term. Or they've come off it and they've regained the weight. Perhaps in those instances, if it's not long term sustainable, it's because they haven't maybe had the appropriate support. That might not be the physician's choice. Maybe there's kind of user error there as well. But yeah, I totally get your point.

S: Yeah, but and, and even there again, and physiologically, like pharmacologically when you come off the drug because it's an appetite suppressant basically, right? So you're essentially down regulating that part of the brain that says you're saying to it, you're not hungry. And then just like anything like you come off that drug and you're going to get a little bit of a rebound effect. Now you're actually more hungry than you were before because you've kind of reset those receptors. So there is a, it's not just behavioral, there is actually a physiological aspect to the weight gain after coming off the drug. This is something that I'm sure is going to get studied more since this drug is relatively new, but that is the dominant hypothesis in terms about why that happens.

Nick Tiller: And this means that it might well be a drug for life for many people.

S: Yeah, basically. And I've had lots of discussions with people about is, is that a good or a bad thing? Well, I think if you balance the long term risks of taking semaglutide over the course of the second-half of a life or the long term risks of being chronically overweight or obese, I think there's a pretty clear risk to benefit ratio in favor of taking the drug, right? You can't just go through your life being morbidly obese. That's not an option either.

S: Yeah, exactly. It's risk versus benefit. All right, Nick. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

Nick Tiller: It's my pleasure. Thank you guys.

S: And just people can find you at nbtiller.com. Your books are there, The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science. You have two books coming out, The Health and wellness Lie and What Science Says About Dieting, so we'll keep an eye out for those. Maybe we'll get you back on the show when those books come out.

Nick Tiller: That would be awesome. Thank you guys, real pleasure.

S: All right, take care.

E: Thank you, Nick.

Science or Fiction (1:38:05)[edit]

Theme: Death

Item #1: The WHO reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths.[5]
Item #2: It is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.[6]
Item #3: In 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease.[7]

Answer Item
Fiction It is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.
Science The WHO reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths.
Science
In 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease.
Host Result
Steve clever
Rogue Guess
Bob
 It is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.
Jay
 The WHO reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths.
Cara
 In 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease.
Evan
 It is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.


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 then I challenge my panel of skeptics tell me which one is the fake. We have a nice light hearted theme for this week's science or fiction. That theme is Death.

B: I love it.

S: I've done that before.

C: My favourite.

S: It's a good science of fiction. So 3 facts about death. OK, ready? Here we go. The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. Item number two. It is estimated that over a half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.

B: How many?

S: Half a million. Item number three. In 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease. Bob, go first.

B: These all sound kind of reasonable to me. Damn, 5 million snake bites. 5 million? That's a lot and not many deaths. So that one in 250 die? That seems probably high. OK, so half a million extreme weather. Now that I think about it, that seems kind of high too. Extreme weather events, half a million. 500,000 extreme weather events. That's a lot. So these don't sound too reasonable to me. Let's see, COVID. That one makes sense. I'm going to go with 500,000 deaths from the weather seems a little high. I'll go with that as fiction.

S: OK, Jay.

J: The first one about The WHO report that over 5 million snake bites occur each year and there's over 100,000 deaths. And this is globally, correct Steve?

S: That is correct. It is the World Health Organization.

J: I mean, I would assume that 90% of this is happening in Australia. Just kidding. But I do think it's true. Sure. There is an incredible number of poisonous snakes out there. And I think it's very common that people don't know how to react and don't know what to do.

C: Right, you bite snake. Snake bites you.

J: Yeah, bite you?

C: No, they're venomous. Because they because they bite you. It'd be poisonous if you bit the snake.

J: Yeah, I meant that. I always screw that up. Yeah, it's a common thing that people do, you know? Number two here, it's estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events. That's a lot.

B: That's what I was saying.

J: Half a million, I mean, that's a lot of people. And you think we'd be hearing about it more, right? God damn. I'm not sure about that. I mean, I could see as global warming is getting worse. I can't rule it out though, because again we're hearing about 100,000 snake bites. So OK then the last one here in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease. Now what is that?

S: Heart attacks.

J: What does the word ischemic mean?

S: Lack of oxygen.

B: Lack of blood.

S: Lack of oxygen.

J: Lack of oxygen. Oh wow, didn't give me the number though, and I think that means something. He didn't give the number in the third one. Second leading cause of death. You know what? I think that was the fiction. I don't think that was the second leading cause of death.

S: All right, Cara.

C: Jay thinks that it wasn't COVID-19. It could be. I think it was definitely in the top five. I don't know where in the top five because, OK, 2019 is when it first happened. But in China first, by 2020, it had spread everywhere. But I don't think we got a vaccine until maybe 2021 early or maybe late 2020. But it I definitely don't think it was in everybody's arms right away. So I could see that if it was 2022, I wouldn't buy it because I think we had vaccine and Paxilvid like a pretty good vaccine program by then. But people were dying, a lot of people died from COVID before we knew how to handle it. So I could see that. It's funny because over half a million deaths globally attributed. I was like, yeah, of course. And then you guys were like, that's really high. And I was like, was it? But maybe I'm primed because of my news item tonight. You probably can't clarify, but you mean like directly attributed like they died in the hurricane, they died from the fire, not like downstream effects of them or?

S: I will not clarify that.

C: OK. All right. Because then I think if the number is low, I feel like at that point it would be millions plural globally from displacement and stuff. So I don't know, I feel like the numbers either too high or too low. Maybe it's a Goldilocks. And then yeah, globally, 5 million snake bites. I feel like we've talked about this before. We talked about like deadliest animals. 100,000 deaths. Snake bites are horrible. So yeah, if you get bit by a venomous snake and you do not have access to anti venom, which is expensive and difficult to produce, then you might die from it. So in areas without good health services, especially in rural areas, I definitely think people are dying from snake bites. So 100,000 yeah, maybe. So I guess I got to go with Bob and say that that number is off on the on the global, attributed to extreme weather events.

B: Yeah, Cara went with me.

S: OK. And Evan?

E: I think there's a reason why fear of snakes is a real thing. I don't think that just happened accidentally because we recognize it's a true danger. And 100,000 deaths a year, I think is a tribute to that. So yeah, I have a feeling that one's right. And yeah, I think also the-I'll go with Bob and Cara because this one about the extreme weather events, it's just so wide, it can be interpreted so many ways and it kind of lets a lot, I think several ways this could be wrong, whereas less so with the COVID-19 one. But I wouldn't be surprised either if that one. But I'll go with Bob and Cara. I'll say extreme weather events, fiction.

S: OK, so you all agree on the snake bites, so we'll start there. The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. You all think that one is science and that one is science. So we have to distinguish between a snake bite and an invenoming, which is when a snake bites and injects venom most snake bites-

B: Usually a dry run.

S: Or they're just not venomous.

C: Or they're not venomous snakes.

B: Yeah, that too.

C: And that wouldn't really kill you unless you had a really inopportune place.

S: 5.4 million people worldwide are bitten by snakes, 1.8 to 2.7, so half are in venomings and of those around 100,000 die from year to year. It's like 81 to 137,000 at the high end. And then two to three times that number have amputations or permanent disability from the snake bite even though they don't die. I thought that number was huge. You know, that's a lot of people die from snake bites.

C: I'm assuming again that they're in like rural or developing.

S: Of course. I'm sure they're not in New York City.

C: Yeah, they don't have access to good healthcare. But even here people die from snake.

E: Yeah, sure.

C: You got to get help fast and you got to hope that they have the anti venom for that snake.

B: Yeah, right?

S: All right, I'm actually bringing a separate news item about using artificial intelligence to design more effective anti venoms proteins.

E: Do it.

S: All right, let's go to number two. It is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events. Bob, Cara and Evan, you think this one is the fiction. Jay, you think this one is science. And this one is the fiction. So what do you think the number is?

E: 50,000 or 5 million?

C: I think it's 50,000 directly, but like directly attributable to extreme wather events.

E: Yeah, but how are we defining these terms? Extreme weather events.

S: I know it's all so-

B: 500,001, I'll know you say over half a million.

C: Yeah, but it's 50,000. The number is half a million. Sorry. Yeah.

S: 11,500. Yeah, not as many as you think.

B: More than I thought. Wow.

C: Really?

B: I mean less. Even less than I thought.

S: Even less.

B: Fewer than I thought.

S: But I thought I'd get you on-yeah, because we think, yeah, this one tsunami could wipe out a lot of people.

E: Is a tsunami considered a weather event?

S: Of course.

B: Hell yeah.

E: Yeah, but it's an earthquake. How's that weather?

B: Wait, yeah, interesting point.

S: Yeah, it's always a matter of definition, but it's the fiction.

E: But that one in 2004, I mean, oh my gosh, that 200,000 deaths from that one. I've seen so many documentaries.

S: Yeah, I saw a whole documentary. It was unbelievable. At first it looks really tame. The water's just sort of strolling in. But then when you get a little closer, you realize, like, no, that water is carrying houses and trucks and cars and boats and debris. And if you're in that, you are in a grinder. You're in a meat grinder. There's no way you could survive that. Water is powerful.

B: Get to high ground.

S: Yes, you have to get the high ground.

B: As fast as you can.

S: That means that in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease is science. Yeah, that's interesting to think that well, a pandemic like that rocketed to almost was like almost as high as ischemic heart disease. It's like really just barely behind it. More than stroke, more than COPD or more than diabetes.

E: Were there 2 million global deaths in that year? Do you have an exact number on?

S: So COVID-19 was directly responsible for 8.8 million deaths in 2021. Yeah, it was 9.1 million for ischemic heart disease. So again, it was pretty close. She was 8.8 million. Yeah, people die. People die for a lot of reasons.

E: A lot of reasons.

S: But good job guys.

B: I propose if you're first and you get it right, I think you should get 1.2 wins.

S: Yeah, you think so? Yeah, it's not happening.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:48:56)[edit]


"Knowledge is a paradox. The more one understands, the more one realizes the vastness of his ignorance." Netflix show: Arcane - League of Legends.

 – Spoken by Viktor (also known as the Herald) in season 2 of the hit, (description of author)


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

E: We had a quote suggestion this week from a listener in Johannesburg, South Africa. Iqbal. How would I pronounce that? Iqbal?

C: Iqbal maybe?

E: I'm not familiar with that name.

C: Cool name.

E: Yeah, very cool name. So thank you for this suggestion. "Knowledge is a paradox. The more one understands, the more one realizes the vastness of his ignorance." And that was spoken by Victor, also known as the Herald, in season 2 of the hit Netflix show Arcane, League of Legends, which has been which has been referred to me so many times. I that is on my soon to watch list.

B: Highly recommend it, great animation.

S: The animation is off the hook. It is the best animation I've seen and the story is fantastic. The writing, this is typical of it, like it's really intelligently written. The characters are all amazing. The imagery blows you away. It's highly recommended.

B: Yeah, check it out.

S: If you're into that sort of thing. It's basically it's a, it's a magic infused steampunk. Very good. I know steampunk is a little past its peak, but this doesn't matter. It's just the aesthetic is fantastic.

B: It's beautiful.

E: Well, it's nice to see a quote like this appear in a show like that.

S: Yeah. All right. Thank you, Evan.

E: Thank you.

S: And thank all of you for joining me this week.

C: Thank you, Steve.

B: Sure man.

E: Thank you, Steve.

Signoff[edit]

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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  1. ↑ www.nature.com: Does fact-checking work? What the science says
  2. ↑ phys.org: Strategic alliance brings high-energy nuclear electric propulsion closer to reality
  3. ↑ and https://www.sciencealert.com/dumping-seawater-on-la-fires-is-an-experiment-scientists-are-closely-watching and https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/11/24340913/watch-duty-wildfire-tracking-app-los-angeles-nonprofit www.nytimes.com: Far From the Fires, the Deadly Risks of Smoke Are Intensifying - The New York Times
  4. ↑ www.science.org: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq8594
  5. ↑ www.who.int: Snakebite envenoming
  6. ↑ news.mongabay.com: At least 11,500 deaths linked to extreme weather in 2024
  7. ↑ www.who.int: The top 10 causes of death
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