SGU Episode 75

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SGU Episode 75
December 27th 2006
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SGU 74                      SGU 76
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
P: Perry DeAngelis
Quote of the Week
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
Isaac Asimov
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

Welcome. This is the 2006 Year-End Special of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. This is your host, Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society and this is our 2006 Year in Review special episode. Joining me this evening, we have the full complement of Skeptical Rogues. Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Rebecca Watson...

R: Happy New Year.

S: Evan Bernstein...

E: Yes, everyone. Hello.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey, guys.

S: ...and Perry DeAngelis.

P: May all acquaintance be forget.

S: Thanks for joining me, everyone.

R: Thank you, Steve.

E: Pleasure to be here.

S: So this is our special end of the year to close out 2006. This has been a great year for the Skeptics Guide, and we'd like to start off by thanking all of our wonderful listeners out there, because obviously we are nothing without all of you guys.

R: All 10,000 of them.

J: Guys, we love the emails and we love the posts on the bulletin board. Definitely worth it. Thank you very much.

Year in Review (1:15)

• 2006 Year in Review: SGU host, Steven Novella, and the skeptical rogues look back at 2006. They review the highlights of the show over the past year, the most amazing scientific discoveries, keep score on Science or Fiction, and even give a peek at the future of the Skeptics Guide.

S: Definitely the show has been made this year by all of the tremendous emails that we get. We've had a very vibrant message board. A lot of good things happened this year. I took the liberty of jotting down some milestones. As Rebecca just said, we have peaked over the psychological 10,000 download barrier.

P: Five figures.

S: We actually have our most downloaded episode was the November 1st episode where we interviewed Richard Wiseman. It was a great interview. We currently stand at 10,122 downloads.

E: We are on our way to 20,000. Yeah.

S: We have a couple of episodes have peaked over 10,000. We have an active audience of over 9,000, but that's a little bit of variability there. But most downloads of a single episode is over 10,000. We began the year, we began 2006 at about 900 listeners. So we've had a tenfold increase in our listenership.

P: And on a five star scale, the vast majority of our reviews on iTunes are five stars.

R: We're consistently in the top 10 on iTunes Science Podcasts.

S: Actually, when we started 2006, if you can believe it, we weren't even listed on iTunes. I mean, I read back over our correspondents at the beginning of the year, just to get a sense of where things were then. And we were clueless. I mean, we really, I mean, it seems like we're-

B: Were?

S: For those of you who know anything about podcasting, I mean, iTunes is the show. I mean, that's where most podcasts are downloaded. That's the most popular.

P: Right now. Absolutely.

S: By far, that's the most popular aggregator. It's just hard to get any traction without being prominent on iTunes. And we just didn't really appreciate that.

J: Well, things didn't really start to happen until when Rebecca joined the show. And Steve and I decided to go forward with the website. We were in a mad rush to get that done.

S: Yes.

J: And everything came together right around that time. And that's really when things started to take off.

S: Yeah, the beginning of the year is really thing. So at that point, we were still just working off the NESS website. The Skeptics Guide did not have its own URL or website. We really didn't have the website together at all. We were not on iTunes. We were not on a lot of aggregators.

R: And you really didn't have me.

J: No, we did not have Rebecca.

S: We were pre-Rebecca. We were Rebecca-less at that time.

R: Yeah.

P: We call that the peaceful time.

R: So peaceful because you didn't have any of those noisy listeners bothering you with their emails and their marriage proposals.

S: So a lot of good things happened right around the same time. And it's really worked out well for us.

P: They did. They did.

S: In the middle of the year, the other, I think, really momentous thing that happened is that James Randi joined our podcast with a weekly contribution, Randi Speaks, and an affiliation with the James Randi Educational Foundation.

P: Was that really the middle of the year?

E: Was that August?

R: It was August.

S: August. Okay.

R: Which is close to the middle.

S: Yeah. So a lot of good things happened this year.

J: Having Randi on the show, talk about having an awesome thing. I mean, Randi is the man. He's the man.

S: He is. Randi is the man.

E: He's a legendary figure, that is for sure.

S: I've expressed this to him personally many times, but we probably have not said it enough on the show that we are all ecstatic and delighted to have Randi's contributions to our humble podcast. It definitely has helped propel us over the 10,000 mark. No question.

P: Absolutely.

J: His stories are great. I love it when he just talks about the crazy things that he's done or whatever.

E: His old Johnny Carson appearances. I mean, those are gold.

P: His breadth of experience is huge. That guy could talk for months.

S: He's fun to listen to.

J: I didn't know that he did a gig with Alice Cooper. You guys remember that?

E: Yeah, I did. I read about that. A very good overview of James Randi's life and career is on Wikipedia. I even learned some recent stuff there, so go there at some point and read up about him and some of the things he's done in the past. It's very, very good reading.

Time Magazine Person of the Year (5:22)

• [link_URL publication: title]

S: There's one sort of pseudo news item I wanted to talk about this week. Has everyone had a chance to look at Time Magazine's Person of the Year?

P: That's what I was alluding to before.

J: Oh, God, I'm afraid to hear it.

S: It's you. It's you, Jay.

R: No, it's me.

S: It's all of us.

R: Pretty sure it's me.

S: They did mention Rebecca Watson by name.

R: Thank you.

S: The Person of the Year is literally you, meaning everyone who has contributed content to the World Wide Web.

P: It's a silly little gimmick, you know.

S: To the interwebby thingy, Rebecca likes to call it.

J: That's the best they can come up with.

B: It's just a fad.

E: Comp out.

B: It doesn't have legs.

S: You know, it's had a very lukewarm reception. I kind of see where they were going with it. I do think that we are in the midst of a new era on the web where the production of content for the web just exploded this year. And podcasts were specifically mentioned, which is why I'm talking about this, because we were one of the people contributing to this content explosion on the internet. I agree that this definitely was a shift this year, and it does deserve some kind of recognition.

B: Yeah, but Man of the Year?

P: Person of the Year?

S: Do you guys know who came in number two? Who was their second choice?

R: We're no Hitler, but...

P: Yeah, Yabba Dabba Doo in Iran.

E: Adolf Ahmadinejad. Yabba Dabba Doo.

P: Did wonderful things like host a Holocaust denial conference.

S: It certainly had a lot of influence this year.

P: Hopefully it'll be much reduced next year.

Guests of 2006 (6:59)

S: We had a lot of great guests this year. I actually took the liberty of writing down every guest we had this year in order of appearance.

R: You're not going to read them, are you?

S: I'm going to read them really quick. I'm going to run through the names. Ready? James Randi, Eric Altman, Tara Smith, Terrence Hines, Rebecca Watson, Rick Ross, Marilyn Schlitz, Brian Trent, Eugenie Scott, Ray Hyman, James Randi again, Phil Plait, Zachary Moore, Steve Mirsky, Gerald Posner, Neil Adams, Bill Bonetta, Steve Solano, Ken Fader, Larry Sarner, Kimball Atwood, Joe Nickell, Michael Shermer, Stuart Weiss, Michael Stebbins, Richard Wiseman, Seth Shostak, Mark Chrislip, Ken McLeod, and Alan Wallace. Quite a list.

'P: Most of them luminaries of science and reason.

S: Most of them, yes.

E: And a couple of well...

P: A couple of...

E: A couple other people.

S: I like the fact that occasionally we interview people with a different perspective on things.

R: Definitely. I think it's important.

E: It's very important.

S: Those episodes, those interviews get the most listener response by far on both sides, which is fine. Both people who think that they were painful and had to fast forward past them, but also people just were absolutely mesmerized and fascinated by them.

J: The Neil Adams interview was like a landmark interview for us in a way because it basically was like a paradigm shift. All of a sudden I think our listeners had to listen differently. It wasn't a relaxed listening. It was like I have to pay attention and see where this guy's going wrong and fight through it like we do.

S: Right. I think it's a good experience.

R: We had Marilyn Schlitz on just before him, but his was definitely more aggressive.

P: Yeah, absolutely. Here's a serious loon, let's face it.

S: Of course we plan to have an equally good lineup next year. There's a lot of people on my list who just were not able to find the time or whatever who have promised to come on but who haven't come on yet. So I think that we'll have an equally impressive list next year, if not better.

J: And maybe a few repeats.

R: Yeah, definitely we have to bring back a few of the most popular guys.

P: We've actually started to get very recently towards the end of the year here, I think we've had an uptake in our hate mail, which is good, which means we're getting beyond-

R: Not by much though.

B: One to three.

R: We haven't gotten nearly as much hate mail as I've received through my site.

S: Through your blog?

R: Yeah.

P: We will, we will. Give it a little time. I think it's a good sign. I think it's a good sign.

E: It's a sign of our expansion, that's for sure.

R: Reaching a wider audience for sure.

S: Yeah, towards that we're reaching people and we're motivating people who are not skeptics to write emotionally and vehemently against us.

P: Right.

S: Which is good. Apathy is far worse than hate mail. Hate mail is good.

P: Yeah, quite.

Best and Worst Moments of the Year

Best of 2006 (9:48)

S: So in preparation for our wrap up episode, we posted a survey on our message board and encouraged our frequent message board contributors to tell us some of their likings and reminiscences about our podcast this year. So let's go through them.

R: And even though we're going through it now, if you haven't responded, you can still go on there and do it because I enjoy reading the responses to these.

J: Yeah, definitely.

S: First question we asked was, what was your favorite remark made on the show, either just in general or by any specific panelist?

R: I got a lot of mentions. I'll just note that.

S: So here are some of the responses from Steve. "We're just so damn excited."

E: That is good.

J: That's his, he quote you on that.

S: He does. Bob, "We should just put billions of dollars into this". That's a classic Bob quote.

R: Said in every other episode.

S: Rebecca said, "But Steve, we don't have time to test our theory. The world is in peril." I remember that quote. That was a funny one.

E: I don't remember that one. It's good.

S: And Perry, we all know what Perry's most memorable quote is.

R: I believe that's something about birds and monkeys, right?

S: "I have monkeys in my pants." (laughter)

B: Steve, in line with that, this is not a quote made by a panellist, but this is a quote made about Perry that I just loved. Alex Batten sent in, I believe it was an email. He said, "Perry is like a dark flower that withers all it comes in contact with."

J: I have a great Perry quote. "Any monkey worth his salt would give any bird a beak flip."

R: I have a Perry quote too, actually. He said in response to the fact that vegetarians live longer, he said "The number of years Rebecca will live is directly proportional to the horror of her life."

B: Yes, I remember that.

P: All dripping with sound was that.

S: This following comment of Rebecca to Perry got a few mentions. Perry was asking about how he could tell from his hand whether or not he was a homosexual, and Rebecca's response is, well, are you holding a penis?

P: I set her up golden for that.

R: It was a good setup.

P: It was a very good response, very humorous.

S: Jay, your most cited quote was, "All right, bring on the bacon. I'll eat it." (laughter)

R: I had forgotten about that until I read that. That was hysterical.

P: How did that whole bacon thing get started?

R: It was because the very first science or fiction I think I did with you guys, it was about-

S: Healthy bacon with a bacon free.

R: Healthy bacon. Jay said if that one was true, he would eat 50 pounds of the bacon.

J: No, I said 10 pounds. And I still will eat it. Come on.

R: I totally knew that it was true because I just read the article that day. I goad him into it. And then the next week you did it again. There was something that you were absolutely sure was false, and I was absolutely sure it was true, and you bet more bacon. You have a lot of bacon to eat. I'm so glad we were reminded of that.

S: When it comes out, when it comes out, we're monitoring this.

J: If I eat all that bacon, my IQ is going to go down.

R: That's impossible, Jay.

S: One of my favorite Rebecca quotes, which was known by a couple of our listeners, was, "I won't mate with any of the true believers." Evan was mentioned for, "We'll break out the poetry at another time in the future."

R: Oh, God.

S: We're still waiting. We're still waiting.

P: We're still waiting.

R: Thank goodness.

S: Breaking through to rap.

P: We've got ourselves in the skeptics poetry corner.

E: Rapping? All right, we'll see what 2007 brings.

R: Lay down a funky beat.

E: Jay, you'll help me with that, right?

J: Absolutely. I have a Bob quote, which was very recent, and somewhat controversial quote that Bob gave us a couple of episodes ago. He said "That guy's dance card is going to be full if he goes to prison."

B: Yeah, right.

R: Referring to Ken Hovind.

S: Ken Hovind. And Jay, you got another mention for your oft-quoted comment of, Oh yeah?

R: It's a good comeback.

S: It's a good comeback. What was his response to that question? Oh, yeah.

J: Oh, yeah. That's the weakest comeback in the history of mankind.

R: And actually, Jay also got noted for his rant about the infants being sent on long...

J: Space, yeah.

B: Seating in the universe with...

J: That still gives me freaking nightmares.

R: Sometimes when Jay goes on a rant, those are... It's not just sometimes. Those are always good times.

J: Sometimes when I'm doing it, and I'm halfway through, and I can feel myself going on and on, and I'm like, they must want me to shut up. Shut up.

R: And then Tom Cruise got into it.

J: Oh god. I hate that bastard. I've got a good one. This one, Bob was talking about that guy, Wang Wu-Suk, that did the stem cell research, that he lied about it. And Bob goes, yeah, can you believe it? He was honoured as the research leader of the year in 2005. And then Perry goes, if you just make stuff up and lie, it's very easy to be spectacular. And I just love the total disdain in his voice. Episode 35, if you want to hear that, by the way.

P: I don't recall it, but I'm sure it was something.

S: Very piffy, Mr. D'Angelo.

Best Guests (15:56)

S: Well, we also asked our listeners who they thought the most entertaining guest was, and I just listed all the guests, so you can have them fresh in your mind. And there were a lot of different comments. Mark Crislip got noted.

P: Did you say the most interesting guest? Or the most entertaining guest.

S: Most entertaining.

R: Most entertaining, I think it is. Phil Plait got a crap load of folks.

J: Absolutely. Phil's awesome.

S: A lot of people liked Phil Plait.

E: He's like a hometown favorite.

J: My favorite guest of the year was Steve Mirsky.

S: Steve Mirsky, he's a great guy.

B: Steve is good. You know who I enjoy a lot? Just listening to them. Ken Fader and Terrence Hines are just a blast.

E: I can't get enough of Ken Fader.

S: Joe Nickell got a mention. He's a great guy, too.

R: My most entertaining was Richard Wiseman. He just makes me giggle a lot. I had trouble picking who my most entertaining was, because I love Phil, of course, too. And also because a lot of times we cut out the dirtiest bits. And those are often the things I find most entertaining. So I can never be sure what made it to air.

E: Yeah, you should hear our blooper reel, folks.

P: Yeah, one day you might be able to buy that for $19.99.

R: You have to show ID at the counter.

P: It was too dirty for the show.

E: Definitely.

J: Steve, who was your favorite?

P: Skeptics Gone Wild.

S: I'll tell you in a second, but I just wanted to note that one listener noted that his most entertaining guest was Bill Nye, whom we've never had on the show.

R: But the dream of it was fantastic.

S: He's on our list, but we haven't made it yet. Mine, obviously all the guests that we've talked about were great, but I think the one that is sort of like the stealth great guest was Gerald Posner. He is a very smooth guy to listen to, very smart, very well-spoken. It was really the easiest.

P: Highly informed about his subject matter.

S: He gets my personal award for the easiest interview to edit afterwards.

R: Does that come with a little trophy, Steve?

S: It does. It was slick, very slick.

E: He's a pro.

P: And what was that guy, Weisman? Who was that English guy, Rebecca, you just mentioned?

R: Yeah, Weisman.

S: Richard Weisman.

P: Yeah, he was great. He was very, very lively.

J: Yeah, he was a cool dude. I liked him.

P: Very, very friendly.

S: Off the air, we had him imitate an American accent. It was so funny. He was terrible. It was awful.

R: It was really bad.

S: It was awful. It was funny.

J: Steve, did any of that conversation get on when I asked him about the English accent bit and all that stuff?

S: No.

J: Oh, good.

R: Dear Lord, no.

P: I don't think so.

J: Oh, did listeners miss an awesome bit?

S: They did.

R: They really didn't.

Worst Guests (18:38)

S: We also asked our listeners who the worst interviewee was. The answers were pretty much split between Alan Wallace and Neil Adams.

R: Yeah, and one listener brought up a good point, which was, do you mean worst in the most crazy or the least entertaining? And I think it went Adams and Wallace, respectively.

E: Did Bigfoot Boy get mentioned?

S: No.

R: Marilyn Schlitz.

J: That guy was nice. He was a nice guy.

B: He was interesting.

J: He wasn't off his rocker.

B: It was obvious that a lot of his answers were well thought out.

J: He's not crazy. That guy wasn't crazy. Neil Adams is crazy.

B: But not only that, it's not only the fact that Neil was spewing some weird stuff. He was very frustrating to interview because you would ask him a question and he would go off and we could not interject. I remember at the end of that interview thinking, that interview sucked because it was so frustrating. This guy would just go on and on and we just couldn't get anything in. It felt like we were doing it.

P: Full shadows of the Gish Gallop, these guys, you know?

J: Absolutely.

P: But that Wallace, I mean, he was the worst. He kept calling us unskeptical. He kept name dropping. I mean, he was terrible.

J: Hey Perry, get a bowl and some milk because that guy is cuckoo for Coco Pops, man.

R: That was clever.

S: Obviously a smart, erudite guy, but he is wrapped up in his self-contained belief system and his logical construct is sort of wrong at every turn, but in a kind of subtle way. You could see how he would kind of miss it. But he definitely has his conclusion and he's insulated it pretty well. Now going back to Neil Adams though, for those of you who may not have noticed this, I had a fairly lengthy ongoing email debate with Neil Adams and I posted that on the notes page to that episode. If you go to that episode with Neil Adams, look at the notes page. There's a very long, there may actually be also be some additional postings made to that, but you'll get a much better flavor for Neil Adams from reading that than from the interview because I had an opportunity to really push his back against the wall about some very specific facts and specific claims. And I tell you, he just got crazier and crazier and crazier the more I talked to him.

J: It's a good read.

S: It is. And I actually asked him flat out, so Neil, so you think that you've revolutionized basically every branch of science and that you're smarter basically than all working scientists. And he said, yeah all working scientists are unimaginative boobs and I have a unique vision. He thinks that.

E: One flew east, one flew west.

P: Vision mostly concerns Batman, but.

J: So Steve, tell us what Neil has won.

S: You know, we won us talking about him on the episode.

R: Congratulations.

J: Steve, I wonder if he hates you now. He must.

S: I didn't get any holiday cards from him.

B: I did.

P: You plan on having an email exchange with Wallace, Steve?

S: I'm probably going to just write an article analysing his claims because I think it's worth it.

P: So for those of you who send in the forms that you wanted us to discuss that, discuss the interview after it was over, look for Steve's article.

S: Yeah, I mean, that's sometimes it's hard to do a debate when you're interviewing something because we have to be fair to them. It's not like there's a moderator and I'm getting 50% of the time. They actually get like 90% of the time. And if I'm lucky, I can interject here and there. And also you really, it's hard to get down to the real nitty gritty. In a written treatment of the subject matter or a written debate, you can get much more detailed. You can make specific references. You can come back to claims and really work them out.

R: And it also gives them a fair chance to respond to that in kind, as opposed to when we talk about them after they're off the phone, like we're doing today.

S: We're just reminiscing.

R: I'm just saying.

S: It's a good companion to an interview like that, is some kind of written treatment in more detail of the subject matter. So we have it for Neil Adams. Look for it for Alan Wallace.

Worst Pseudoscientist (22:26)

S: We also asked who is the most annoying and or hated pseudoscientist mentioned on the show. So this is not somebody that we interview, just somebody that has been mentioned in the last year on the show. Do any of you guys?

B: I got a guy, I got a guy. Now, you don't really usually refer to this guy as a pseudoscientist, but he really is. It's that long dick dong stem cell guy. Now, if he's not a pseudoscientist, that, I mean, this guy, fake data. I mean, it was really horrendous what he did. He could sit back to field years. It was terrible. He pissed me off more than most pseudoscientists.

S: So the most mentioned from our listeners was Sylvia Brown, the fake psychic, who is just heartless, and Kent Hovind, who was the Young Earth creationist, who is pretty wacky.

P: Currently in jail, isn't he?

S: Currently doing it.

P: Isn't he currently buying bars?

S: Hard times.

J: Well, mine absolutely, hands down, is Tom Cruise.

R: Yeah, well, we know that.

P: Jay, you're still working on that interview? Lining that up.

R: Still trying to butter him up.

J: Polishing my rifle, Perry, is more like that.

R: Yeah, cut that out.

P: South Park did a good job on him, that's for sure.

R: Jay's going to be on a list.

J: Yeah, right? You can't push them too hard, or they bite back with lawyers, man.

P: I'm sick of being afraid of lawyers. Let them fight.

S: We're not afraid. In the US, we actually have very favourable laws, if someone's going to sue us for slander, they have to prove that what we said was in fact wrong, that we knew it was wrong, that we lied deliberately, and with malice, with the intention of doing harm. It's kind of a high bar to make. In England, it's very different. It's just preponderance of the evidence. They don't have the burden of proof. The burden of proof is more on the person who's accused.

B: What kind of baloney is that?

S: Yeah, it's bad. I mean, the US legal standard is much, much better. So sure, go ahead, Kent Hovind, prove in a court of law that you're right and that we're wrong. Or Sylvia, yeah, sure, prove that you have psychic powers in a court of law, and that I believe you have psychic powers, and I'm lying about being skeptical about them.

E: Nice talent.

S: I'm not worried.

E: Nice talents, Sylvia, nice talent.

P: How good did I.D. do when it was in court?

S: Yeah, right.

P: Did great.

S: Yeah, you could just submit a brief saying, it's already been disproven in court. There it is. We don't have to argue it again.

Favourite Episode (25:32)

S: We asked our listeners about their favorite episode this year, and.

R: That's tough.

S: That's tough. It is tough.

B: No, it was easy. The one that hit the 10,000 downloads.

J: I picked one.

S: Richard Wiseman, that was a very good episode.

R: That was a good one.

S: Jay, what's yours?

J: It's episode 32, but we talked about, it just was a really fun episode for us. We were all cracking up the whole time. It was the one where we talked about if someone breathes, exhales their dying breath, and then over a certain number of years, the molecules from that will spread everywhere. So you will definitely breathe in molecules from that breath.

S: Caesar's final breath.

J: And then we morphed that into breathing in every fart that ever happened. And then, like, it's been lighting up the whole atmosphere. It was just, it just went insane.

B: That was a, that was a high watermark.

P: That certainly was, yes. I'm very proud of that moment.

R: I think I picked one, kind of at random, but it's one that sticks out for me is the episode where we interviewed Jeannie Scott, because I adore her and I think she's great. And also that's the same episode where we talked about, Scientology superpowers, which will never cease to amaze me.

B: That was awesome.

P: That was a good episode.

S: That was a fun one. One of our listeners mentioned number 67, because of the ass reading discussion.

J: The ass whisperer?

R: Yeah, the ass whisperer.

S: And also mentioned, that's the episode where Steve getting pissed off at the TV show he was on. That's the one, the history channel about exorcism.

P: Which was pathetic.

R: Don't start again.

S: Don't get me started. A couple mentioned the episode where we interviewed Phil Plait, which kind of just dovetails with people liking Phil Plait as, that's the Bad Astronomer for those who may not know, with liking him as a guest. One person actually said they thought that the episode where we interviewed Dr. Wallace, because it was just fascinating to delve into that. Although I think that that's the sort of the Oscar effect, where movies come out right before, right at the end of December, so that they're fresh in people's minds when the Oscars come out. Wallace was sort of the last interview we did.

P: How about our first episode? When's the last time you went back and listened to that, Steve?

S: Two weeks ago.

E: Same for me, yeah, two weeks ago.

S: The first episode was rough.

P: It was rough.

J: The first 20 or so were technically challenged.

S: That was our learning curve.

E: We were like the little rascals saying, hey, let's put on a show in the backyard.

B: Pay as you exit.

P: Pay as you exit.

E: Yeah, so long, Crabby.

J: So long, Crabby.

S: A couple of people said every episode was great, which is nice.

E: And you're the person of the year, too.

Greatest Misinformator (28:27)

S: Then the next one, we said, who is the person who did the most to confuse the public about science or promote pseudoscience or paranormal beliefs?

B: I got one.

S: All right.

B: George Bush.

R: Yeah, that's it.

J: Top of the list, babe.

B: The key there, Steve, is that you said the most to confuse. I mean, his sway was just so huge that I had to consider him. Sorry, Perry.

S: A few listeners agreed with you. Some threw in Ann Coulter for good measure. By the way, Ann Coulter still has not answered my open public challenge to debate her on evolution.

R: Shocking.

S: She's dodging me. I got to do an Ann Coulter clock.

E: Good idea.

S: She's dodging me.

E: It's good alliteration, too, the Coulter clock.

S: It's possible she may not have heard it, but even still.

J: Steve, I have somebody.

S: Let's hear it, Jay.

J: The pope.

R: The pope is a good one.

J: Because he came out.

S: Pseudo-embracing of ideas.

J: Yeah, that's pretty much it. I put him on the list.

R: I think I have to go with Kevin Trudeau. We don't talk about much anymore. And for those of you just joining us, he's the guy who put out the book on cancer cures, and the cures they don't want you to know about.

S: Oh, that guy is terrible. He's a con artist.

R: He is. Yeah, I think he's-

S: Prove me wrong, Trudeau. He is a total, total con, heartless, heartless, scum con artist. A couple of listeners agreed with that when they mentioned Trudeau. Someone's got to write a book just going page by page and debunking everything this guy says, because everything he says is twisted and wrong.

R: And deadly.

S: And deadly. He's just trying to foster every kind of conspiracy theory and fear and anxiety over big government and doctors and big pharma, etc. And in their place, he's selling just this laundry list of nonsense. It really is just he is stealing people's health to line his own pockets. That's what it comes down to.

R: Disgusting.

P: What's the name of that professor from the University of Colorado that said we caused 9-11?

E: Yeah, Churchill, Ward Churchill.

P: That's it, Ward Churchill, the name of that guy. We killed all the people on 9-11. It was our planes. It was all us. We did it.

R: Yeah, that's true.

Most Unexpected Scientific Discovery (30:48)

S: We also asked what was the most unexpected scientific discovery or the coolest scientific discovery.

E: That Pluto is not a planet anymore. That was pretty big.

S: That was more of a decision than a discovery, but that was definitely a science story of the year. The whole debate about whether or not Pluto should be a planet or not. It got, of course, demoted to a dwarf planet. I do think in the end the right decision was made, but it was emotional.

B: How about water on Mars? I didn't see that coming.

S: That's my vote. Water on Mars. That was awesome. And that, of course, increases the probability there might be some microbes up there. And also dovetailing with that, just before we leave the water on Mars, dovetailing with that was the possibility of water on Enceladus, which is a moon of Saturn. Although there's some question about whether or not these plumes that are being seen are actually geysers of water. Maybe they're geysers of some other material and not water. But still, we can still hold out some hope that there's liquid water on Enceladus.

R: And that kind of fits in with my actual most unexpected scientific discovery, which beats all of those hands down. And that is the discovery of a furry lobster on the bottom of the ocean. Snipply the furry lobster.

B: I saw that one. I predicted it.

R: You're so full of lies.

B: But I predicted it.

E: I saw an octopus in a tree once.

P: Yeah, I was going to say, can the furry lobster hold a candle to the tree?

R: Nobody saw furry lobsters coming.

S: That was cool.

B: I love the name. What was it, Hirsutus or something?

R: Snipply.

B: H-I-R-S-U. That was good.

S: It's actually a crab, but yeah. Some listeners wrote in the likelihood of interbreeding between early humans and Neanderthals.

R: That was a good one.

S: Although, actually, there was a related story, which I thought was more interesting, the early breeding between human ancestors and chimp ancestors, much later than was previously thought.

R: Yeah, the hot monkey love.

S: The expanding, the increasing rate of the expansion of the universe was mentioned by a couple people.

B: Wait, that's more than a year old.

S: Yeah, I thought that, I didn't remember that being this year.

P: So I don't really understand it, this new news about a possible cure or treatment for diabetes. About the nerves in the pancreas or?

B: Yeah, that looks pretty good.

S: All right, here's the skinny on that. It's certainly good. There are the nerves in the pancreas that regulate the secretion of insulin from the islet cells in the pancreas. And what they basically did was treat mice with diabetes with capsaicin, which is a chemical. It's actually the chemical that makes hot food hot. It kills nerve endings. That's why your mouth burns, because your nerve endings are literally on fire and burning and dying. And so they basically used that to deaden the nerve endings in the pancreas, and it reversed the diabetes in these mice. So it's suggesting that the nerve function was actually inhibiting the secretion of insulin from the islet cells, but the cells were still able to secrete insulin. It's a very, very interesting discovery. Nobody knew that the nurse had that much influence over insulin secretion. It remains to be seen if this will translate to diabetes in humans. If diabetes in humans is due to other problems like the islet cells are dead, then this treatment will not pan out. So it's interesting. But for every hundred things that are really interesting in animals, maybe one ends up actually affecting human medicine.

B: I hope this is one of them.

S: Always take these with a grain of salt.

J: Steve, do your nerve endings in your mouth grow back from hot food?

S: No, that's why people get tolerant to hot food over time.

P: I thought the tongue was one of the most regenerative organs in the body.

S: Yeah, but not the nerves.

P: Okay.

S: Well, capsaicin pretty much permanently kills nerve endings. It's actually used that way therapeutically.

B: Yeah, but what dose?

S: If you're producing pain, then you can use it to deaden them.

B: So if I eat a little chilli pepper, I'm killing nerves?

S: Yeah.

B: Well, that sucks.

E: Well, stop it.

S: That's why people who habitually eat hot food can tolerate hotter food than people who don't.

J: But do you actually lose taste? Do you become less sensitive to taste?

S: Well, most of your taste is actually in your olfaction, your smell. So you don't lose the ability to sense flavor.

B: Unless you're snorting capsaicin.

J: So at one point, you can just pour acid into your mouth, you know?

B: It's not too bad.

E: Okay, back to the button.

S: You can take that act on the road. All right. A couple more questions.

Most Unbelievable Science or Fiction Entry (35:20)

S: The most unbelievable but true science or fiction entry?

B: I like the one, the quantum computer that didn't need to be turned on to work.

S: Yeah, that was good.

B: That was good.

P: The one about the ether and the one about anti-matter.

B: Yeah, there you go.

P: Geez.

J: The one I'm still mad about is that some buffoon said that our spines are antennas to some cosmic reality or some crap.

B: Hyperdimensional matrix, the prediction.

S: Our brains are embedded in a hyperdimensional matrix.

R: That was just what the guy said, though, wasn't it?

J: It doesn't matter. It still was ridiculous and it pissed me off.

S: Do you guys remember? Astronomers have discovered a giant intergalactic ball of gas, 100 million degrees and 3 million light years in diameter.

B: That's another one you got me on, you bastard.

S: Yeah, Bob, you had a hard time with that. Now, for some follow-up, I emailed the lead author on that paper and asked him a few questions. It says, Alexis, and he wrote back, "Dear Steven, thanks for your interest in A3266." That is such a designation.

B: That's catchy.

S: And I wrote, "What is the latest follow-up on discovery?" And he wrote, "We have been working together with the scientists of German Virtual Observatory to make available these discovery data for anyone. We expect to get the web interface to fully functioning in the mid-February." So there you go. So the update is, wait until mid-February.

J: That guy sounds so incredibly smart, it makes me sick to my stomach.

E: We got to do a follow-up on that paper.

S: "What is your interpretation of this finding? Why is this gas cloud so large and so hot?" And he wrote, "The temperature of the fireball is typical for its class of objects, the clusters of galaxies. However, any such object is remarkable and astonishing."

P: Sure is.

S: Says, "The appearance of A3266 is, however, remarkable, even for clusters of galaxies, and is caused by the most energetic events in the universe after the Big Bang, a merger of two clusters of galaxies." I also, out of interest, asked, "What would conditions be like for star systems within the cloud?" And he said, "The density of the hot medium is rather small. So on stellar scales, it has little effect. The analog in our solar system is the solar wind. So it is likely that the local processes associated with the stars themselves are more important than the state of the gas on large scale." So basically, if you were inside this thing, you wouldn't even know it so thin.

J: All they have to do is just call up Neil Adams. He'll tell him what the hell's going on.

S: That's true. That's true.

P: That ball's expanding.

E: There is no gravity.

R: There's another unbelievable but true science or fiction entry in the one about what happened before the Big Bang.

B: Yes, I didn't like that one either.

R: That was some crazy shiznit.

J: Bob is totally pissed off about that one.

E: Yeah, Bob's got a lot of pent-up frustration with me.

R: He really does.

B: Made no sense.

R: We should throw more money at it.

J: Bob, out of everybody here, you're the only one that has-

B: Billions.

J: Bob, after we finished the podcast, you're the only one that sits there and like, god damn it, science or fiction, I've got to-

R: Steven is not right.

B: I hate re-evaluating what I think I know.

E: Sacred cows baby, sacred cows.

P: I was pretty pissed off about the Aether, too. I mean, the Aether, we put that to bed.

S: One listener agreed with you on that one, pal.

R: Do you notice how the freewheeling girl who just sort of takes it all as it comes is the one who's in the lead?

B: You've temporarily pulled ahead.

J: Bob, I'm sorry.

S: You guys get too emotional about the science or fiction.

R: You really do.

S: Clouds your judgement.

J: Bob, Rebecca's like a casino. The odds are in her favour, baby.

B: No, Steve, I'm just going-

R: That's true.

B: Steve, all I can do is base my answer on what I know. So, I mean, what else can I do? Should I flip a coin, then? I'll just flip a coin. Is that what you're saying?

S: Bob, let me tell you.

B: Or, no, no, I know. Should I- I guess I should try to divine what you would do, what kind of trick you would like to do.

J: Bob, don't do that. Don't do that.

R: Do you hear yourself, Bob?

J: I'm a living example of how that doesn't work.

P: Go to the Akashic files.

E: Yeah, Akashic file, Bob.

S: Bob, in your defense, I pick segments that sound too unbelievable to be true. And if something sounds that way to me, it's likely to sound that way to you, because you and I read a lot of the same stuff.

B: Right.

S: And we talk about a lot of stuff. So-

B: But I try not to second- I don't want to second-guess you, then, because then you'll third-guess me, and then I'll get all [inaudible].

P: Because you know that I know that you-

B: That you know.

S: Just make your best guess.

J: Bob, there's plenty of room down here with me. Just join me.

B: That's a long drop, Jay.

Funniest Segment of the Show (40:06)

S: The last survey question was to nominate the funniest segment on the show. This could either be a specific conversation we had or a specific segment of the show.

B: I enjoyed thoroughly our Scientology superpower discussion.

R: Yeah, that was a good one.

B: That was a blast.

J: Yeah, that was great.

'B: Sensing hunger.

S: Breathing in the farts was funny.

P: Was there any photo from our readers, Steve?

B: Our readers?

P: I mean, I'm sorry, our listeners.

S: The most common answer was any segment in which the panel ad libs. They like it when we chew the fatties and chat.

B: And some people don't like that. Some people are like, just give us the facts. I'm like, sorry, you're in the minority.

P: A few people, yeah.

R: We do get some emails like that.

P: I do not like the humor in your program.

E: Yeah, please delete it.

J: Stop enjoying this.

P: You must speak only of science.

B: How about the email? That woman critiquing Rebecca's humor style.

R: That was hysterical. I'm kind of sorry that I couldn't read that on air just because it would have been so cruel.

E: The hundreds of emails.

R: Everything was spelled wrong.

E: Every email has been, in its own way, really interesting to read.

R: Yeah, I love getting the email.

E: I love it.

R: That is the best part of the show.

B: It's funny. It seems at work, all I'm doing now is reading these emails all day at work. It's like, I got to read this one. Wait, I got time. I got to read this one too. It's awesome.

P: Our email volume has exploded.

R: We do read them all. It's just we can't respond to them all.

S: We read every one. Rest assured.

P: We do.

S: The bacon segment got some mentions. The monkey bird debate this year, which was sort of this running gag throughout the whole year.

J: I loved it when Rebecca revealed that she was a vegetarian in Perry for like 10 minutes, 15 minutes after that, he was like-

P: It was on the air?

J: A vegetarian?

S: Yes. Yes it was.

P: I didn't realize that was on the air.

J: Rebecca, you don't get, maybe you know now, but you didn't, especially when this happened. Perry is a meat eater.

R: Oh, no, I've always known. I wouldn't have brought it up if I didn't know. Obviously, it's fun to poke at Perry and see what happens.

P: Vegetarians are freaks.

R: Look, he's doing it now.

J: Perry, when you order a hamburger at a diner, you say, give me the meat. I don't want the bun.

P: Please. I mean, I can't even.

J: That's not kidding. It's the truth.

P: The sexual arousal of steak is so evident.

R: Did you say sexual arousal in the steak?

P: Who said that? Wait a minute.

R: Can someone rewind the tape?

P: Meat and steak in the same. Yes. It was me, your pee eater.

R: What.

J: Steve.

Scepticism in Mainstream Media (43:07)

S: The cool skeptic of the year. I want to say that it's South Park.

B: Very good Jay.

S: South Park had a lot of good skeptical episodes this year.

P: Always does. Trey and Matt get it.

E: Simpsons had a very good episode this year as well about the whole ID intelligent design versus evolution debate in the courts. It was excellent.

R: Actually, Family Guy did a really great ID clip, too.

Most Outrageous Pseudoscientific Claims (45:39)

J: I also have my favorite, most outrageous illogical statement of the year. Basically, it was the episode that we were talking about, the castor out of demons, Father Amorph. And he's the guy that said, of course, the devil exists and he can not only possess a single person, but also groups and entire populations. I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler and Stalin did. Almost certainly, they were possessed by the devil. There he is.

P: Absolutely, absolutely.

J: Father Amorph.

R: My most outrageous pseudoscientific claim, I think, would have to be the Balakim guy, the time traveling chiropractor. That's a classic.

B: That was good.

J: I swear to God.

R: That's like a sitcom right there. Time traveling chiropractor.

J: I drive to work and I say that word and I laugh to myself.

R: Balakim.

J: I love it.

R: It's a good word.

B: My favorite illogical statement just recently happened with the Wallace interview. His whole rant on the 100 millisecond delay between brain correlates and subjective experience pointing to a woo-woo land. That to me is like, wow. That pretty much was the crux of a big part of his argument. That delay to him was evidence. What I'd like to see is somebody, I think, actually sent an email on this. I'd like to see somebody have the subjective experience and then have the brain light up, have it the opposite order. Then that might be a little wacky.

P: That's horse and buggy. That's all horse and buggy. You're very unskeptical.

S: That's not what he's claiming, though, because he's saying that the brain causes consciousness so the brain activity has to come first. He's just saying that delay means it's not the same thing, but that's nonsense because the consciousness takes 100 milliseconds to manifest. That's how fast nerve conduction happens.

B: I'm not saying that that's what he was saying. I thought it was a funny email that that guy sent us, but for him, that 100-millisecond delay was so important.

P: I had lunch with C. Everett Koop, and he told me that you said that he was...

Science or Fiction Placements (45:52)

S: Do you guys want to hear the science or fiction stats to date?

P: Not particularly.

B: I can't believe somebody made a pretty chart about it.

S: Yeah, this is Jason Etheridge, one of our listeners, took the time to crunch all the numbers. This is what he came up with. This is all... This is not just this year, but just on the Skeptics Guide to date, update as of episode number 74. Rebecca is in the lead. 57.1% who's played 35 games. Bob is 50.9% of 55 games. Evan, 39.5% from 43 games.

E: Ooh, above average.

S: Here's where we fall below chance. Perry, at 29.1% from 48 games. And Jay, 24.2% from 33 games.

J: That's below chance.

S: It's below chance being 33%.

J: What the hell?

P: That's not bad. I'm doing 49%. I'll get it up a little higher.

J: It's so bad.

B: That reminds me of a Honeymooners episode, since Perry's so fond of coming up with a Honeymooner shtick. In one episode, Ralph, of course, had this harebrained scheme that completely fell on his face. And his defense to his wife was that, no one's 100%, Alice. Nobody's 100%. And she's like, yes, you are. You've been wrong every time.

S: How many times do you guys think that I stumped everyone?

B: 10 times.

J: Once.

S: Out of 58 games.

E: Out of 58 games, six times.

S: And Bob read it 10 times.

B: Yeah, sorry, I read it.

R: 10 times.

P: Oh, good, good. Bob.

R: Little cheat.

E: Well done, Bob.

S: Out of 58 games.

B: I didn't mean to ruin that for you guys.

P: We can see the way you get such a high score.

J: OK, so Rebecca wins. Everyone knows it. Everybody knows now.

R: Yeah, so what do I get?

P: Cheater face.

R: What do I win?

J: Rebecca, Steve didn't tell you?

P: You win a big, juicy hamburger.

S: You get to get our adoration and respect.

J: No, you get to do 2007 with us.

P: You get a Laurel and a hardy handshake.

R: Oh, so you're going to keep me around? Is that it?

E: Yeah, for a while.

R: Oh, that's super. Thank you so much.

S: You can stay.

J: Rebecca, we're going to ride you on this show until you get fat.

Hopes and Dreams for 2007 (48:09)

S: Speaking of which, what are your hopes and dreams for 2007? For scepticism, science, the podcast, whatever.

R: Oh, man. That's open-ended.

J: Well, I want to see us do our next project, which is. So Steve came up with the idea of creating a media portal site that's going to handle skeptical news, interesting science facts, and also having hopefully some very intelligent scientists writing articles for us, along with Steve and Bob writing articles. Anyone, Perry and Evan, too, and Rebecca. I'm not going to do it, but get some smart people to write articles. It's going to be a cool project to work on, because it'll really be us shaping the kind of media that we want out there.

S: Yeah, we're hoping to go forward with really increasing our online content. I'm going to start a blog in the early 2007. Hopefully, by January 1, 2007, it'll be up and running. And my personal hope is that we have the same degree of increase in our listenership as we did in 2006, meaning that we have a tenfold increase. So by the end of 2007, I had to be at 100,000 listeners.

J: Is that even possible?

S: No, it's impossible. It defies the laws of the universe.

J: No, but you know what I mean. Basically, honestly, if we pick up another 10,000 people, I'll be really surprised.

S: I would be happy if we got to 20,000 by the end of 2007.

E: I think that's a reasonable goal.

S: But hey, dare to dream, dare to dream.

R: My goal for 2007 is to marry a listener.

B: Oh, my God.

S: You're just begging for it.

B: Now we're going to get 50 email proposals a day.

R: I know. I could use the self-esteem boost.

B: Don't you have enough?

J: We should thank JD for monitoring our board for us.

R: Totally. JD is doing a fantastic job.

S: Thank you, JD.

R: You're saving me a lot of time.

S: Thanks for all of our message board denizens.

B: Steve, I'm looking at that now. 648 registered users. 12,218 articles. Wow, that's more than I realized.

R: For just having it up for a few months, it's grown very quickly. And it's a good community.

J: I would say my favorite listener, dare I say this, is Luna. He has very good questions. I love all of his input on the board. And he cracks me up. He's a good dude.

S: I love them all.

P: My goal for 2007 is to rescue a single person from gullibility and bring them into the light of reason. If we can do that, I'll be satisfied.

S: If I could just reach one person, it'll be all worthwhile.

Sceptical Puzzle (50:56)

S: Evan, before we forget, Evan, you have to give us the answer to last week's puzzle.

E: Oh, right. The answer to last week's puzzle. Well, the answer to last week's puzzle is a gentleman by the name of Dr. Henry Slade. Dr. Henry Slade. A charlatan, admitted so, on his deathbed. But he had a lot of people convinced of his powers, including people such as Napoleon III, who was so impressed with his powers that he gave him a three-carat diamond. So one of the resources said that as payments. And apparently, he earned a lot of money doing this. And people would give him jewels and money and whatever else. He went broke, basically squandered his fortune. Plus, later on in life, he was robbed. He was mugged and robbed of what money, a few thousand bucks that he had left. And he was actually left. It was kind of sad. He was left paralysed, partially paralysed after that attack. And he just had to live out the rest of his life in, you know...

S: Poor and paralysed.

E: Yeah, and a bit of obscurity. But...

P: I guess he didn't see that attack coming.

E: Well, he was a fake from the get-go. But he fakes him pretty. And the most interesting thing about that is that Alfred Russel Wallace, of all people, apparently fell for it and stood up and defended him.

S: I think it was Penn Jillette who said that the deathbed is the only true lie detector that we know about.

P: Yeah, yeah.

S: Probably true.

P: Probably true.

Signoff

S: Well, guys, it was a great year.

R: It was indeed.

S: Thanks to all of you.

J: So what's the title of the year, Steve?

S: We did ask people to title the year. This was the year of the what? To summarize the skeptics guide and scepticism and science. What is it that defines this year? And there was no real consensus. What do you guys think?

J: It's the year of losing science or fiction.

S: That's a very personal object.

P: Yeah.

S: The death of intelligent design was suggested.

R: It was definitely a Darwin-oriented year. So I think calling it the year of Darwin probably wouldn't be too far off.

S: The year of evolution triumphing over intelligent design, at least for the time being.

P: I think it's the year that the Sceptics Guide left its infancy and entered, hopefully, what? Adolescence?

R: Is that what comes after infancy?

E: Maturity.

S: I think we came into our own-

B: Toddlerhood.

E: I mean, number eight on iTunes is, you know.

P: It's pretty good.

E: No small feat.

S: For science and medicine, yeah.

E: Well if I may, I'm going to take 10 seconds. Steve, you are our leader, our inspiration. And certainly, without this podcast, we would not have a chance to do this without you and your leadership. And I thank you personally. And I know we all do. And look forward to a great 2007 with you again.

B: Great job, Steve. You're awesome.

P: Any of us could get hit by a train. And this podcast will go on. But not Steve. If he gets hit by a train tomorrow, it's over.

S: Thank you, guys.

P: It's over. I'm sorry, there's no one else.

J: He's right, Steve. You know, what the listeners really don't know is that you really, do you do all the hard work. I mean, you're the one that produces the show.

R: He does all the editing.

J: Yeah, all the post-production.

P: In fact, the skeptical rogues are all fake. It's just Steve behind the scenes.

R: Steve is actually a brilliant impressionist.

J: I'm a cardboard cutout, you know.

S: I can say that because I know that the audience won't believe me.

E: So an excellent job, Steve.

P: Yes, here, here.

E: Congratulations on our collective success. Thanks to your leadership.

S: Thank you all. It is a pleasure working with all of you. I could not do this without all of you guys as well. You guys make the show fun, entertaining. You bring things to the show that I could not do by myself.

P: Quite true.

S: I appreciate all of you as well.

E: Thank you, doctor.

S: And that's a good sentiment to end on. Bob, you want to read a quote to end out the year?

B: Yeah, quote from one of my favorite authors, Isaac Asimov. "Creationists make it sound as though a theory is something you drummed up after being drunk all night."

S: Because that's how they come up with their thoughts. Well, that is our show for this week, and that is the Skeptics Guide for 2006.

P: Hear you all in 2007.

B: Good year. Good year.

P: Bring your friends.

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

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at www.theskepticsguide.org. Please send us your questions, suggestions, and other feedback; you can use the "Contact Us" page on our website, or you can send us an email to info@theskepticsguide.org'. 'Theorem' is produced by Kineto and is used with permission.

Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary