SGU Episode 999

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SGU Episode 999
August 31st 2024
Ancient footprints reveal the story of creatures that roamed the Earth long ago.
SGU 998                      SGU 1000
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
"Sometimes scientists change their minds. New developments cause a rethink. If this bothers you, consider how much damage is being done to the world by people for whom new developments do NOT cause a rethink."
- Terry Pratchett
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Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

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 August 28^th, 2024, 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: This is episode 999.

B: Whoa.

E: No, no, no.

J: It's crazy.

C: Nein.

S: It is amazing. Next week, obviously, we will air our 1000th episode, which we just recorded in Chicago.

E: The odometer turns over.

S: It kind of breaks my nomenclature for the episodes because I do like 001, 002, and then build up.

E: Oh no, you've only been using three digits?

C: Yeah, are they going to be in order now for everybody?

E: Are we going to have a Y2K thing here?

B: SGUK thing.

S: I think 1000 episodes, that'll be plenty.

E: No way. We'll never make it that far.

S: So yeah, so now I have to start with 1000. It's fine. It won't matter to users because the episodes are dated and they're organized by date.

C: Oh, okay.

S: And I use the international dating sequence because that scans better. If you organize it, it'll be in order.

E: But you'll know, Steve.

C: Is it year, month, day?

S: Year, month, day.

C: Oh, okay.

E: Yeah.

S: If you'd use the American one, then it doesn't work.

C: Oh, the American one confuses literally everybody.

S: Yeah.

E: Month, day, year.

C: Yeah, like month, day, year does not in any...

E: Nothing wrong with that.

C: But it doesn't go in any reasonable order.

E: Well, other than the fact we express ourselves when we speak.

C: We do, but a lot of other places they don't. They would say 28th of August. They wouldn't say August 28th.

S: It doesn't matter if you're staying out the month's name, but if you go 822 or worse, 89, then that's confusing, right?

C: Super confusing.

S: I get hit with that all the time.

E: So we need to eliminate the first 12 days of the year. Problem solved. First 12 days of the month, I should say.

C: For me, I mean, I do it because it's what we do. But like the chronology, what's the word I'm looking for? Like the order doesn't make sense because you either go small to big or big to small. But what we do is we go medium to small to big. That's weird.

S: I agree. The international system makes more sense, which is why that's what I use and the title names. But yeah, you get used to it.

E: We're creatures of habit.

C: Indeed.

S: All right. Well we're going to get right to the show this year.

C: This year?

S: This episode. We're going to get right to the show.

E: This month.

What's the Word? (03:00)

• Bunk

S: Cara, you're going to start us off with a what's the word?

C: I am. So this what's the word is courtesy of James from Asheville, North Carolina, in a particular county, which will become relevant very soon. He brought up the word bunk or debunk as a word of interest. And so I was like, OK, why? Yeah, we use the word bunk a lot in the skeptical movement, but I don't know how interesting could it be. I love the etymology of this word. So let's get into it. Obviously, when we think about the word bunk, not in the sense that we use it as skeptics, but a sleeping. Okay, actually, it comes from the nautical term. So it was a bunk was in a boat to begin with in a vessel. And then it was in a railway car. And then it became something that was in like a fixed dwelling.

S: Talking about a bed?

C: Yeah, a bed. A sleeping berth, as they called it. That came about in the 1700s. A bunk bed, it looks like, wasn't a thing until 1869. The origins of that, they're a little weird. They think maybe it was based on this like Scottish English word bunker, which was kind of an interesting local term for a seat or a bench. Nobody really knows the origin. Might be Scandinavian. Might be Swedish, but they don't really know. Okay, fine. That's that word. But when we talk about bunk in the skeptical sense like nonsense, baloney, come on, give me some synonyms.

E: Hokum.

C: Hokum.

S: Balderdash.

C: Balderdash. I was going to say haberdashery, but then I was like, that's hat making. That's not right. Balderdash. That's what I was looking for. It has nothing to do with a bunk in which you sleep. So, yeah. So I am going to read a quote. This is quoted directly out of Merriam-Webster because they could say it better than I could. Here we go. You could almost say it was an act of Congress that brought this word into being. Back in 1820, Felix Walker, who represented North Carolina's Buncombe County, that spelled B-U-N-C-O-M-B-E in the U.S. House of Representatives, was determined that his voice be heard on his constituents' behalf, even though the matter up for debate was irrelevant to his district and he had little to contribute. To the exasperation of his colleagues, he insisted on delivering a long and wearisome speech for Buncombe, which turned into a speech full of Buncombe. And this long speech became a synonym at the time for meaningless political claptrap, and they changed the spelling to make it more phonetic. So instead of B-U-N-C-O-M-B-E, it became Bunkum, B-U-N-K-U-M, which was then shortened to bunk. So this is an American invention from a politician who, as our friend James from Asheville in Buncombe County, North Carolina, said, he rode his horse all the way to D.C. to speak to Congress. They had been debating for weeks about Missouri joining the Union as a free state or a slave state, and he wanted his constituents back in Western North Carolina to know he was on the job. So he just kept talking about Buncombe for like hours, and eventually this became part of the American lexicon. And then later, there was a book written by American journalist Edward Woodward called Bunk. It was written in 1923, and he actually coined the term debunk, and he said this, quote, to keep the United States thoroughly debunked would require the continual services of half a million persons. At the time, he was devoting a lot of time to debunking conspiracy theories and misinformation in the United States.

E: A hundred years ago.

C: Right. I love this. Thank you so much for your suggestion, James. What a colorful. It's not often that we know like we really can pin down the etymology of a word. It's always fun when there's a great story behind it.

S: Yep. Love it. All right, thanks Cara.

News Item #1 - Starliner Update (07:03)

• Boeing Starliner astronauts will return home on a SpaceX Dragon in 2025, NASA confirms 

S: Jay, give us an update on the Starliner hubbub.

J: Yeah, there's a lot to this, this whole thing that went down here. So just as a quick recap, NASA and Boeing had to make a decision on what was going to happen regarding the two astronauts that got pretty much stranded on the ISS. And those two astronauts are Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore. So right now they're currently aboard the International Space Station. They were only supposed to be there a week. They launched on June 5, 2024 aboard Boeing's Starliner capsule as part of this crew flight test that they've been doing. This was the first time that Starliner was used for a crewed mission. And their issues arose, unfortunately. Starliner's propulsion system had some problems with the thrusters, and NASA believes it's too risky to bring them home using that capsule. So, the details behind this are during Starliner's docking with the ISS, five of the 28 reaction control thrusters malfunctioned. These thrusters are pretty important to orienting the ship.

C: Five of them?

J: Yeah. And it was a significant concern for NASA because that of course the safety of the astronauts is paramount and NASA and Boeing extended the astronauts stay on the ISS to give them time to troubleshoot the problem and they have not been able to come up with a solution. There's no solution to be figured out at this point so the Starliner, it already had challenges during its initial launch. There was a helium leak, and the thruster malfunction during docking was considered to be very serious. Of course, NASA is going to take this very seriously. They decided to return Williams and Wilmar to Earth no earlier than February 2025, and they've also decided that they're going to use a SpaceX Dragon capsule. And the Dragon Capsule that they're going to use is part of SpaceX's Crew-9 mission, and this mission will now be modified to accommodate the two astronauts' return back to Earth. So what they're doing is they're modifying the layout of the Dragon Capsule. It'll have more cargo space, there'll be space for personal items, and then the astronauts have to use the Dragon-specific spacesuits, which I guess work in tandem with the way that their module was manufactured and designed. The Crew-9 mission is going to launch with only two crew members going up, which will create the space for Williams and Wilmore to go back home on the return trip. Now, NASA and Boeing plan to return the Starliner capsule to Earth without a crew in it in September of 2024. Of course, I expected this. I didn't know how long they were going to leave it up there. At some point, they have to go, look, we can't fix it up there. We just got to bring it down and hope for the best. So, of course we're hoping that the capsule does make it back. They're gonna land it at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. And the uncrewed descent is going to by itself be classified as an uncrewed test flight because in essence they are testing to see what happens when some of these engines are not functioning. And they're going to also modify the separation technique to a more simplified one that will hopefully work with the limited engines that they have. And NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the decision to prioritize the safety was influenced by the past tragedies that NASA went through, which included the Challenger and the Columbia Space Shuttle accidents that took place. And those two cases concerns were brought up, but they were not handled properly, right? They didn't address the issues and there's too much red tape and blah blah blah, you know what I mean? So big expensive government agencies like NASA back then when those accidents were happening, like just didn't have the internal systems to handle this type of thing. So NASA has changed their culture. They've changed the way that they handle these situations and their new culture encourages transparency, open communication, directly to avoid repeating mistakes that they've made in the past. This is exactly the kind of changes that we want to hear, of course. Everybody's disappointed. People that work at Boeing are disappointed that they couldn't complete the crew flight test. NASA and Boeing, though, are recommitting to further understanding what happened, resolving the issues. They want to get the Starliner's thrusters completely fixed and get them back in the game. So NASA is remaining optimistic about the future of Starliner and the Starliner program. And of course, NASA is smart enough to know that they want to have multiple crewed flight options for the ISS, right? They don't want Boeing to drop out because they want them to compete with SpaceX and for them to both to continue to improve their technology. For exactly reasons like this, right? We don't have a command module or anything that we could send up that could that can bring them home right now. There just isn't the option and they're luckily they could stay up in the ISS and it really won't put any strain on anything going on up there. So they're gonna encourage Boeing to continue to invest time and money into this to make their equipment work properly. Now, the decision to keep the astronauts on the ISS until February 2025 means that they have this really long extended stay of about eight months, and NASA's ISS program manager Dana Weigel indicated that the station operations and the supply and everything, it's not under strain. Like I said, it's all good. They can handle it. They have plenty of backup. And there's a few other things I looked up here. I think there's some obvious questions here. Why couldn't they use another space capsule or a Soyuz capsule? Like, what's happening? And the answer is kind of complicated. Boeing, Starliner, and SpaceX Dragon capsules are specifically designed To interface with NASA's system, the ISS docking ports and everything are configured a particular way. It's all very, very much well planned out. They know exactly how these things fit together and everything. To put it very plainly, the Russian spacecraft like the Soyuz command module, they just simply have different designs for docking mechanisms.

C: The Soyuz goes to the ISS all the time?

J: Yeah, but they have to make it compatible, and I guess the one that they could use if they were going to take one of their command modules, they'd have to pull it off of another program that it's designed for that isn't designed to connect to the space shuttle, and that's a big deal. So NASA and Roscosmos always prioritize their missions first. So yes, they want to help each other. Yes, we work in coordination with them. Of course, we're lucky outside of all the crazy politics that are happening, these two space agencies, they work with each other, but they just didn't have the spacecraft to help them. There are political considerations that do come into play. There's also safety concerns and everything. NASA just really wanted to use the SpaceX Dragon capsule because they know that they have confidence in it and it's safe and reliable. Now, there's consequences for Boeing as well, which I would think makes perfect sense here. Internally, first, there's disappointment and a sense of urgency to resolve the problems, right? People that work at Boeing, Boeing engineers, they've been working really hard. To figure it out, understand everything, and fix these thrusters. They're conducting ground tests, they're doing simulations to replicate the conditions. They're doing everything that they can. But it was a black eye for them, and they have lost street cred now, which is bad.

C: Yeah, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. We've been losing faith in Boeing for a long time. This was another death by a thousand cuts.

J: Oh, of course. This is all part of the bigger thing that's happening with them. And it's just another crappy layer to this situation that Boeing is going through. But like I said, NASA is like, OK, you're going to be fine. Work it through. You build this thing and make it work so we can count on you in the future. And they're giving them good money to do it. But it's not crystal clear what's going to happen with Boeing and Starliner right now. And then another thing I wanted to clarify was the astronaut pay hubbub. Have you guys been hearing the chatter online? Are they going to get more money? Do they give them millions of dollars if they get stuck on the ISS?

C: Are you kidding me? Oh, I'm sure this is such a lucrative job.

J: Well, I have the details, guys. I got it all. I got it all for you.

E: Cool. All right.

J: So astronauts who end up having to stay longer on the International Space Station or whatever like just anything like this due to unforeseen circumstances, they already have clauses in their contract.

B: It says suck it up.

J: They do not receive special or additional pay.

C: That is insane.

J: For being stranded. Now, keep this in mind. They're on the bankroll. They are being paid a salary, right? They get money.

E: They're employees.

J: Whether they're in space or on the ground, they got the astronauts busy working public appearances, crafting new technology, everything. These people are crazy busy.

C: Yeah, but your life is infinitely harder in space.

J: I know, I know, but they're a government employee, most of them are government employees, and they receive allowances and benefits related to their work in space. Like there is some things that they'll get other money depending on the circumstance of them being in outer space. But it's not like hazard duty could come in, postmission bonuses can come into play, stuff like that. But it isn't like this major change. It's like a regular job in a lot of ways, all right?

C: But I wonder if there's some sort of insurance policy that they can because I don't know. Can you imagine? Imagine for a second, you have a business trip to Milwaukee for a week.

J: Yeah, yep.

C: And then you get stuck there for eight months.

J: Yeah, Cara, totally. But it is part of this job, right? So while their situation might be unique, but it doesn't automatically trigger extra pay beyond the standard allowances for extended missions. And that's just the way it works. And check it out. Here we go. They are considered to be GS-12 to GS-14 pay grades, right?

E: So what happened to 13?

C: 12 to 14.

E: Oh, okay. I thought they were being superstitious.

J: A GS-12 starting salary, just guess what it is?

E: GS-12...

C: $40,000 a year.

J: Astronaut pay, right?

E: This is astronaut pay?

C: $90,000.

E $175,000 per year.

J: Starting pay, $86,000 a year.

C: Yeah, that's what I thought.

E: 86?

J: GS-13, typically between $102,000 and $120,000 annually.

C: Government salaries.

J: And then when you get to the GS-14, this is when the big bucks start rolling in. They go from $120,000 to $160,000. $160,000 for the really seasoned people. Now, these salaries don't include additional allowances and benefits that astronauts might receive. Like I said, there's housing allowances and some hazard pay duty. You know, there's little...

E: Free air-sick bags.

J: But they receive their salary, like I said, even when they're on the ground. It's a full-time gig. And I can't help but think in the back of my mind, NASA's like, what are you complaining about? You're an astronaut and you get to astralize yourself in the ISS, right? You get to Astro all you want for eight months.

C: Yeah, but the truth is, that is not what NASA's thinking. And the reason I know this is because there have been some really beautiful documentaries made about the mental health of astronauts. NASA is very concerned about these individuals' mental health.

J: I totally agree, Cara. I'm actually joking around. The point is, They're there. It's their job. They know that this is the way it works because what can NASA do? And unfortunately, I would have liked to have known like, hey, if something like this happens, we give you 500 grand. You know, like think about the billions of dollars that the government's spending. And I told my wife, this was really impactful for me, right? I'm reading about this. I'm up to date. I'm constantly reading all this stuff because I love all the space news, right? So finally I'm like, I better tell my wife about this. I know she probably hasn't read it. So I tell her, hey, astronauts went up for a mission to the ISS and they got stuck up there. Guess how long they got to stay now? They they don't have a spacecraft to bring them down. She's like, what, a couple more weeks? I'm like, no, it's going to be like eight months. She almost started crying.

C: Yeah, it's really sad. They're away from their family.

J: And she got angry. She's like, I can't believe it. Birthdays are going to happen without them. You know, there might be deaths in the family. There might be weddings in the family. You know she was going for the whole, like...

E: They cast their vote.

B: Yeah, wait, they miss Halloween.

E: Wait, this is a... Okay, but...

B: Let's get real, people.

E: Fire up every shuttle we have. Let's go get them.

S: Bob, have you had Halloween on the ISS, then?

B: Ooh, but I wouldn't have brought anything with me. I wouldn't have anticipated it.

S: So here's another wrinkle though, Jay, I don't think you mentioned is that, so yes, they have to wait for the next shuttle, for the next capsule to come down, which is the SpaceX Dragon capsule, but they're bumping two people from that capsule who have to stay longer too, so this is like a domino effect. I don't know when they're going to catch up but they may have to plan an extra mission to the ISS to sort of get caught up with the crew exchange.

J: And that's the problem because, again, they don't have a bunch of command modules ready to go for emergencies and stuff. We're not there yet. We're we're literally like The Starliner was just cleared. You know what I mean? Like, it's like this stuff is always like very last minute.

S: But it does show that when NASA basically decided that they were going to contract with two companies to make redundant capsule crude capsule systems. And that was a good choice.

J: Absolutely.

S: Imagine if Starliner were our only capsule. Imagine how FUBAR that would be.

J: I totally agree, Steve.

C: That's really scary.

S: I think we should have three.

C: I think that it's the culture. Like, let's be honest The NASA culture is this really interesting government, like now it's government private, but a lot of astronauts were either scientists or pilots. NASA is not the military, but I would not be surprised if culturally you saw some similarities. When these astronauts were probably told, I have some bad news, I can only imagine that their response was, I will serve in the best way that I can. This is I want to be here. I want to be doing this. And the two people that got bumped, I'm sure they weren't petty about it. I'm sure they were like, that is how this goes. And I think that's something to really honor. It is part of the job. What I worry about is the impact on their families, all the things back home that they're not able to attend to. I just can't imagine that there wouldn't be some sort of insurance policy or some sort. It's not about their paycheck. It's about all of the downstream things that this unforeseen absence is costing them.

S: I think they're used to that as well.

C: I think so too. Yeah. It's a big part of. Yeah. It's a sacrifice for sure.

S: Well, we hope it all turns out well, but yeah, it was disappointing that they had to basically scrub the Starlines return.

News Item #2 - Therapeutic Roleplaying (22:18)

• Roleplaying Games May Help Autistic People - NeuroLogica Blog 

S: Guys, I want to talk about a topic many of us are very familiar with, role-playing and role-playing games, but from a therapeutic perspective. Now, this is an interesting timing because this is the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, and I don't know if you guys saw the commemorative stamps.

B: Yes.

E: Oh, yes, the stamps.

B: Liz bought some. They're so cool, and they're big.

E: Don't use them.

S: Yeah, they're pretty. I like them. So there's a couple of things going on here. One is the arc that tabletop role-playing games and Dungeons & Dragons, D&D in particular, has taken in our culture over the last 50 years. And also just the concept of using role-playing for therapy, for counseling, or for therapeutic purposes. This is inspired by a recent study which I blogged about yesterday, which looked at the use of role-playing games to help autistic people. But let's back up. We'll get to that in a moment. So you guys remember, Cara, this is probably before your time and you weren't paying too much attention to it, but back in the late 70s, early 80s, when most of us started table-topping, D&D and tabletop role-playing had a massive stigma associated with it.

B: Oh my god.

E: Oh, yes.

B: Devil worship.

S: Well, there was two aspects to that stigma. One was, this is the domain of geeks and nerds. And extreme geeks. You know what I mean? Like, the gratuitous joke is that these are people who can't get girlfriends.

C: But that stigma still exists. It's just maybe not as blatant.

S: I agree, but now it's way less in my experience. It's often loving and not as cutting as it used to be, but it was like a serious cut.

C: Yeah, but I think if you ask any high school kid who's really like, they probably still get shit for it. They're probably still bullied for that, which is sad.

S: Yeah, I mean, there's still different subcultures in school, absolutely. I don't think geek culture is as much on the fringe as it used to be.

E: And when it was burgeoning everything was new about it. It hadn't yet achieved sort of an acceptance level at all. It was considered totally fringe.

S: And the other angle is what Bob brought up is that it was tied to the Satanic Panic of the 80s.

E: Oh, yes.

S: The fundamentalists went after it big time. And then even beyond that, like even in our town in Connecticut, there was a discussion on the school board, which we knew about because our father was on the school board, to ban it on school grounds because it was thought to be psychologically risky for students because there was all these panic stories about it being tied to murder and suicide and all kinds of stuff. Like ridiculous.

C: It's so healthy. It's so good for kids.

E: I know.

S: I know. It was new and weird. And so they, they're afraid though these kids are going to act out their role playing in real life or whatever. You know, they're going to get like, almost like a cult kind of a thing, but it was just pure fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar. Now, it really was not based upon anything. And of course, the media hypes up the anecdotes stories of like individual kids who committed suicide or died by suicide and happened to play D&D. And then the D&D gets the blame for it, even though they they had mental illness and depression, etc.

C: And, or they were bullied relentlessly.

E: The confounding factor is enormous.

S: But now I think things are very different. I think mainly because it's one, it's just familiarity. People realize it's not like satanic worship and it's not some kind of horrible cultural, blight. But also I think that many adults today played when they were kids. And so, sort of firsthand that it's like, it's just, it's just a game, it's a completely wholesome activity. Parallel to this, role playing obviously, is a one sub genre of, quote unquote acting. It's not acting, but it's like you have improv and role play and stage acting and whatever. It's like one of those things. But also, really interesting is that it's been looked at for its therapeutic potential. And even outside of gaming, just like role-playing in the context of you're with your therapist, and you can say, OK, we're going to role-play whatever, like you doing what you're afraid of or talking to-

C: Yeah, or like a Gestalt empty chair technique or something.

S: Yeah, the empty chair. You're talking to your father about whatever, how you feel about them. And the therapeutic potential has been long recognized, and the consensus is that in the therapy setting, it could help to teach new skills, could be used, incorporated into cognitive behavioral therapy, can identify negative patterns of behavior, can build confidence, and could also even be used to treat trauma. So these are all pretty well-established applications.

E: And it improves your THAC0, too. That's an inside joke.

B: To hit AC0.

E: Thank you, Bob.

S: The recent study was interesting because not only was it looking at role playing in a therapeutic context, it was specifically looking at playing D&D as the form of role playing. And this was more of a qualitative study. So they basically had subjects who were kids with autism, and they had them engage in a role-playing game, DM'd by one of the study authors for six weeks. And then they interviewed them before, during, and after the process. And again, this is sort of the qualitative aspect of the study to see how did they react to it, what did they think about it. And they found, again, not surprising that the subjects felt that it helped them build confidence in social situations, that they gave them skills that they could apply to their daily lives, that it was a very comfortable setting in which they could explore aspects of their personality. So, which again, not surprising. The other aspect of the study is that it was partly exploring some common misconceptions about autism that a lot of people think that autistic people are asocial or they're not very socially motivated. But that's actually not universally true. It's actually not, I think, the most common manifestation. In fact, they often are highly socially motivated. It's just that social interactions can be exhausting for them because they don't have the casual sort of comfort or skill with it.

C: Yeah, and sometimes perplexing as well.

S: Yeah, it's a very highly cognitively demanding sort of prospect for them. This was a way to say, all right, you're in a social situation, which they love, and the emotional and cognitive load is dramatically decreased because anything you do is fine, the stakes are a lot lower, and you get to have intense social interaction in a safe environment, right? And they loved it. They thought it was a very, very positive experience. So that, to me, represented the full arc of role-playing, and D&D in particular, from the stigma, fearful way it was looked at in the 70s and 80s, to now, where it's kind of accepted as just another activity that some people do. Sure, maybe it's a little nerdy, but it's wonderful, and it's celebrated in a lot of things. I know we all watched Stranger Things, which was great.

C: Right, yeah, they did.

S: The fact that the kids all played D&D was looked upon in a very positive light in that storytelling, giving the kids confidence and skills that they were able to utilize when facing a very challenging situation. And also, I think it emphasized the bonding aspects of it. It's a very intensely social interaction, which is very helpful for people who may have difficulty making social connections.

C: It's helpful for any children, honestly.

S: Yeah, absolutely. But especially so for those who might be a little bit more challenged. And so I know at least three of us on this show have pretty extensive experience with role-playing, both tabletoping and live-action role-playing, LARPing. Jay and Evan, how does this fit with your experiences personally?

J: My role-playing from all the way back has always been pretty intimate with my friends. It's a consistent thing, like we would do it either every week or as we get older it turns into more like once every few weeks or a month, you get together with the same people. The adult version has been a key factor in my socializing with my friends. And I gotta tell you, it's an amazing thing to do. Like you go to a movie and you sit down, you watch the movie, and you might whisper to each other, and then you go back and you might go to a diner afterwards and talk about it or whatever. But being in a room with your friends for like 10 hours at your house, and you go through this complete spectrum of emotion over and over and over again, where things get really intense and they get interesting, and then there's laughing infused throughout the whole thing. And of all the social interactions that I have had in my life, for some reason tabletop role playing games is just maximally enjoyable and restorative to me in a way that nothing really comes close to other than maybe doing like if I were to play volleyball with a bunch of people, I feel like that would that would be a similar thing. I just get it's an invigorating thing, though, to to experience.

S: You think you learned any skills through doing it?

J: I mean, my social skills I think are dramatically better because of all the odd scenarios that I've had to live through in these games and like, having to deal with all these different types of situations and-

B: Troubleshooting, problem solving, essentially, a lot of it.

S: Yeah, a lot of tactical, puzzle solving.

J: Like I'll give you an example for me and Steve, right? When Steve and I created the LARP for, this was like a thing that was happening down where George lives, right?

S: In Bethlehem, yeah.

J: Yeah, in Bethlehem. I think we were at the Steel Stacks, was it? I can't remember exactly where we were.

B: Ice House.

J: Yeah, Ice House, rather. Ice House, right? And we wrote this whole module for them, and we watched them, in person, interact with each other and troubleshoot. And I remember saying to Steve, this is nothing to us. These problems that they're dealing with and the way that they're mounting those problems and just watching like a hundred people do this, like with all of our experience, we know how to hit the ground running. My troubleshooting skills I think are way better than they ever would have been. Also thinking out of the box and coming up with solutions and all that stuff, when you're playing these games, man, it's so little about all the stupid things that people think about it. If you're playing with people, adults, and you're playing an adult game here, I'm faced with really serious things that I have to troubleshoot and think about and also emotional things that you have to work through.

E: If I made a list of the people I'm still friends with from my childhood, if I go back, my oldest, dearest friends, we all have one thing in common, and it is Dungeons & Dragons. It is role-playing, without a doubt. Also, at a time in my life when I was moving around the country, it started off in the Northeast, but for various reasons, my family moved. We lived in Texas for a while. We lived in Colorado for a while. This was all when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. That was my way of getting in and making quick friends in the new environments that I found myself in. I was able to just kind of immediately come to the table and be part of that game community. So it was no doubt about it that it served me very well in those early formative years. And like I said, continues to be. Of all the people I'm still good friends with for the longest amount of time in my life, they're all role players.

S: Well, Evan, we met you and Perry through role playing.

J: Yeah.

E: That's right, yep, yep.

J: And Ev, when we were larping together, and we didn't really know each other, but like in-game we meet you, and you're like, we were like, hey, we really like this guy Steve and I were talking, and we're like, this guy's cool we wanna, let's see if he wants to hang out with us, it's like almost like real life we're inviting you in the game as our characters to join us. And, Evan, the weird thing is, is our relationship started more in-game than in real life, and I remember getting to actually know who you are like months later hey, Evan-

E: You met my character first, then you met me.

J: Yeah, like Evan, come out to dinner with us. And we start talking and get to know each other. And then think about all the different role playing games we've played over the years, Evan, all the different scenarios. You just can't you can't make this type of stuff happen in your life without playing some type of role playing game like that. This is the way that you can experience all these scenarios, potential scenarios.

S: It's not just that. So like the one thing that I think is unique to the role playing games-

C: That's what I was gonna ask, Steve, because I feel like a lot of this is gaming.

S: Yes, but what's different about role-playing games is there's one thing that's different from all other games.

C: It requires, I think, a lot more empathy.

S: It does, but it's also that you are, it's the one game you're playing where you're not yourself.

C: That's why it requires more empathy. And I think that's the psychological skill that we're tapping into. Yes, frustration tolerance. Yes, ability to sit with your emotions and not explode, which all gaming helps. Puzzling helps with that. But empathy is a skill that you have to practice.

S: For example, I played many characters. You guys know me. I'm pretty reserved, generally speaking. But I play characters who are the exact opposite of my personality. So I have had to tap into myself, some aspect of my personality. Jay and I, one of our favorite characters that we played, were mobsters. They were very charismatic mobsters whose whole point was to suck players into the dark underbelly of the game. And so we came off as very appealing and very compelling, but also a little menacing. So how do you balance those two things? But I remember it was so much fun playing those characters because you basically have to turn off your superego. You have to be completely unfiltered and say whatever comes to your mind. And it was surprising to me how socially creative and smooth and witty you could be when you unfiltered yourself. But it was also exhausting because it wasn't my personality. You know what I mean? I don't know how you felt, Jay, but I could do it for two, three hours. I'm like, all right, I have to tap out.

E: It took effort.

S: It took it, yeah. But I wonder, there are some people who are, this is the way they are 24-7. This is just their personality.

C: But that's also, how old were you at the time, Steve?

S: 30s.

C: Right. So let's think about, back to the study, right? And back to thinking about the psychological benefits of children or younger people doing role-playing. Think about yourself in that role as an eight-year-old whose identity is not fully developed yet, and who is trying on different identities and personalities and figuring out-

E: It's a little young for the game itself.

C: Okay, fine, 12.

E: They do say the age start is 10, but yeah, 12 is probably more accurate.

C: Alright, let's say 12. That's besides the point. Like 12, and you're still figuring out who you are, and you're still figuring out what your personality is, and whether you feel shy or brave in these situations, and what is bravery to you, and how do you want to be vulnerable with your friends, and all of these different components that really become factors of how you define yourself, of your self-efficacy, of your self-esteem. What an incredible opportunity in a low-stakes way to practice being all of the things that you are trying to find out about yourself.

S: Yeah, I agree. And also, I credit my role-playing experience with my ease of public speaking. I remember how I was at the very beginning of my LARPing experience. Just because of the type of character I was mainly playing, there were lots of situations when I had to talk to a couple of hundred people at a time. Like, I had to not only talk to the town, again, like 100, 200 people, I had to marshal the town. I had to persuade them to do something, and it was difficult. I felt very nervous and awkward initially. By the end of my LARPing experience, it was nothing, nothing for me to just grab the attention of everybody and whatever, make whatever happen, whether I was trying to intimidate them or trying to inspire them or whatever. I was able to practice a lot of these things and developed real social skills doing that. And of course, we also knew a lot of people through the game, and Evan and I then ran the game for five years, where we were not playing, we were running the game. And we knew every player intimately in that game and what their strengths and their weaknesses were, and we saw them. We saw a lot of people enter that game as a completely awkward and nerdy kind of person and blossom into really compelling characters.

E: Fun to watch.

S: Amazing.

B: Geez, I wish you guys would invite me.

S: We did. You know that we did.

B: I got better shit to do.

C: I'm with you, Bob.

S: Whatever. I'm not saying it's for everyone, but I think that it does not deserve any kind of negative stigma attached to it. Nobody should be shamed for engaging in role playing.

C: Absolutely not.

S: It is an extremely creative endeavor. Massively creative and a ton of fun. Among the most fun, probably the funnest game I've ever played, certainly. And also, again, has all these other aspects to it that you can build a lot of skills, which in a way is one of the main purposes of games, right? Yes, it's fun. It's a distraction, but it's also about building skills. That's what many games were invented for. And this is, I mean, this is a game where you get to build life skills and social skills. I think it's perfect, again, for people who may find those situations difficult.

C: It's also some psychologists argue that it's like a fundamental human need, that like that sort of there are these three pillars of mental health, which are relationships whether it's love or friendships or all the different ways that we engage with others, work, that could be academic work, it could be physical labor, but all of the different ways that we produce and we engage and we make and we create and play. That like every single animal, every mammal, every version of an evolved or an evolving organism that at least is somewhat, quote, I don't know, complex, plays. Even well into old age. My dog always plays, and it's important for us to remember that we play, but lots of people stop playing in life. They just stop. They think that it's childlike.

S: It's not.

C: It's not.

E: It's anything but.

C: It's necessary for your mental health.

S: Don't keep yourself from enjoying something like this very intensely. And something that could be a very positive social experience because you're inhibited by those kind of ideas that it's nerdy or it's childish or whatever. To me, that's silly. Just let loose, have fun, build skills. It's great.

J: Can I give advice, though, to people out there that might be intrigued by what we're saying and are interested in looking for a group? You know, first of all, I love gaming with people that I know. And on occasion, when I game with people that I don't know, sometimes someone kind of fits and sometimes they don't, right? You will experience very juvenile type gaming with the wrong group of people. So the quality control there is the people you choose to do this with. I play games with lots of different people under different circumstances, and there's a lot of times where I'm like, oh man, this is literally like playing a game when I was 14. You know what I mean? You don't want to get stuck in that. So just pick the group-

S: Well, that's like playing football with people who are way better than you or way worse than you, right? You got to find your level, like any other thing else, because there is a lot of skills involved. Absolutely.

C: You also want to find there's a component of it, Jay, that I think you're tapping into, which reflects on things like group therapy, too. Like, you can't just throw a bunch of random people together and expect group therapy to work. You have to make sure that there is a trust and a connection and a comfort. And there's a lot of these factors that are kind of hard to put your finger on. But I relate to you because I feel the same way about poker. I can go play in a poker room with a bunch of people I don't know, and it's fine. But when I play in a home game with like friends, there is magic at the poker table. It's so much more fun.

S: Oh, you totally get it, Cara. That's it. That's the parallel.

S: And if you're parents who have kids, this is a perfect parent-child interaction.

C: Oh, fun.

E: Heck yeah.

S: We play with our kids.

C: Start them young.

S: I'm running a game campaign now. Really, the purpose of it is so I could spend more time with my daughters, basically. And Evan is playing with his daughter. And the adults in the game know we're supporting roles, right? We're letting them sort of take the lead and really problem solve and do all the... Even though we have way more experience than they do, but it's great. It's a ton of fun.

E: Oh, it's so much fun watching them.

S: So much fun watching them, yeah, sort of grow into their own role-playing skills.

E: Because it reminds us of our time at that age.

S: All right. Bob, completely different topic. Thanks for indulging us, by the way. This is the D&D's 50th anniversary, so I felt I'm entitled to a little review.

E: Yeah, I think so.

B: It was very interesting.

S: A little review, yeah.

News Item #3 - The Search for Gravitons (45:12)

• New research suggests a way to capture physicists' most wanted particle—gravitons 

S: Bob, tell us about the search for gravitons.

B: Oh yeah, this was fun. A lot more fun than D&D. A new study has proposed a way to potentially detect in the near future what has long been thought undetectable, the infamous graviton.

E: Undetectable?

B: Perhaps. We shall see. The theoretical particle that, if it exists, would be the carrier of that mystifying force we call gravity. Physics professor Igor, or is it Igor? Mikovsky, led a team of first-year graduate students and post-doc researcher Srinath Manikandan in this study published in Nature Communications called Detecting Single Gravitons with Quantum Sensing. Okay, first things first, what is a graviton? I think we've mentioned it on the show, but not in any detail. Gravitons are theoretical, first off, theoretical. No evidence, solid evidence for them at all, really. Gravitons are theoretical particles that would transmit or mediate the force of gravity, right? This would be like photons, which transmit the electromagnetic force, which we call light. They'd also be similar to gluons, which mediate the strong force, etc. So the theory says that gravitons would probably be like photons in that they would be massless and travel at the speed of light. So they would essentially be building blocks of gravity, right? Gravitational waves, which we've covered many times, are often described as these space-time ripples that are formed from colliding black holes or neutron stars, and which are detectable with LIGO. Remember those? So those gravitational waves, which we've talked about many times on the show, would be made up of many gravitons. Okay, you got that? So now you may be thinking, hey, isn't gravity really the curvature of space with no real need for a particle or a force that's transmitted? And you would be right, bravo and brava to you. But you'd be right from a specific context only, really. Einstein's general relativity describes a universe where mass and energy curve spacetime, and that curve tells matter how to move. And we say that movement is caused by gravity, that's gravity. Observation and experiment support this concept of space-time curvature over and over and over. But general relativity, though, is a classical theory. That's a huge distinction. And therefore, because it's classical, it does not incorporate any principles from quantum theory. So as a classical theory, general relativity works fine for large scale phenomena like orbits and black holes, but classical theories don't work well at very small scales or very high speeds. Small scales are ruled by quantum mechanics. So one of the holy grails of physics is a version of gravity incorporating general relativity and quantum mechanics. That's quantum gravity. We've mentioned that multiple times on the show. This would be a fusion of the two great theories of the 20th century, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Multiple attempts at this theory predict gravitons, like string theory and supergravity. They're like embedded right in the math. There they are. They just pop out. But creating a theory of quantum gravity has proved immensely difficult, though, because combining general relativity and quantum mechanics, it's like combining hieroglyphics with Klingon, right? They just don't want to mesh together. And I've often thought I would seriously consider asking a genie for the key to the theory of quantum gravity as one of my wishes. But only if I had more than three wishes, though. If I got three, I got higher priorities.

E: Right.

C: I benefit humankind.

E: Zombies.

B: Now, it would be a big help if we could just actually detect a graviton. That would be an immense help, or maybe even just infer its existence. But every time physicists seriously ponder how to detect these gravitons, they conclude, nope, it seems like an impossible task. Why do you think it's so difficult to detect a graviton if they even exist?

S: Very low energy?

E: Physicists are dumb?

B: No, it actually would take high energy to actually detect it.

S: Because they are low energy, right?

B: Yeah, so what that kind of means is that, and it's one of the primary reasons I have here, is that gravity is as weak as Jay's pea soup. Do you make pea soup, Jay? It's ridiculous. The interaction of gravity with matter is notoriously and ridiculously and stupidly weak. Amazingly weak. How weak? How weak is it? It's very weak. Gravity is 100 undecillion times weaker than the strong force. That's 10 to the 38 times weaker. That's 100 trillion trillion trillion. It's notoriously amazingly weak, far weaker than any of the other forces. Now everybody stand up and jump. I'll wait. So think, how easy is it to jump off the ground, right? I mean, you could easily jump, albeit briefly, but you can jump. You could defy the entire gravitational force of the Earth underneath you. It takes the Earth just to hold you onto itself. All that means, all of that that I've just said means, is that detecting or isolating the interaction of a single graviton would be so difficult. Many think it's just forever beyond our ability. This is not going to happen. It's just so ridiculously weak.

C: It's weaker than the weak force, right?

B: Right.

C: I think it is, right? But how much weaker – you said how much weaker it is than the strong force. The strong force is strong. How much weaker is it than the weak force?

B: I don't know.I don't have that number. Thousands and thousands of times.

C: Oh, okay.

B: Much, much weaker. Yeah, it's far weaker. I mean, the reason why gravity is important is because it's long acting. It doesn't have a short range. It has basically an infinite range and that's why the universe itself has arranged itself because of gravity because it's such a long, long range force. Lead author Pikovski said, many physicists thought about it over the years, but the answer was always the same. It cannot be done in terms of detecting gravitons. It's impossible to imagine quantum experiments that go beyond a few atoms and they hardly interact with gravitons at all. I mean, it's true. When you get down to the scale of atoms, when you're doing a lot of theoretical work, you could basically ignore gravity. It's just a non-entity at that scale. Now, you may think, hey, we can detect gravitational waves. Wouldn't it be fairly straightforward then to detect one of the gravitons that make up these gravitational waves that our LIGO detectors have been detecting for years now? It's an amazing development. The paper actually addresses this specifically. The researchers explain that the famous physicist, Freeman Dyson, once looked into that specifically and he calculated that a typical gravitational wave that we detect would consist of, say, 10 to the 36 gravitons, a lot of gravitons, a huge number. But to detect one or two of those, that would mean that we'd have to increase the position resolution of LIGO to far below the Planck length. Now, the Planck length is tiny. Imagine a proton, right? Really small. Now, divide that by 100 quintillion. That's a Planck length. So, yeah, we're not going to improve LIGO to have that kind of spatial resolution. And no wonder that these physicists have been so pessimistic. And that's just one example. There's so many reasons why this would be so ridiculously difficult. But even given those hurdles, Pikovski still thought of a way to possibly get around them. Scientists have relatively recently been able to observe quantum effects in large macroscopic objects. And Pikovski thought that he could leverage that progress that we've made and point to a way to eventually detect gravitons. Now, the macroscopic object that I'm referring to here that's outlined in their paper is it's a type of detector. It's called a resonator. And this resonator can vibrate at very, very specific frequencies. They would cool the resonator to near absolute zero. And they do that, of course, to minimize noise and make it as sensitive as they possibly can. So the idea is that when a gravitational wave passes by this resonator and it's, and the wave is detected by LIGO, right? LIGO can detect these waves. That same wave should have also had a few of its gravitons, maybe just a couple, or even one, a few of those gravita, a few of those 10 to the 36 gravitons should hopefully have been absorbed and emitted by this resonator, causing it to vibrate in a very specific way. And that vibration can be matched to the energy they would expect from a single graviton. And that's the key to this new idea. A graduate student and paper contributor Jermaine Tobar said, by observing these quantum jumps in the material, we can deduce that a graviton was absorbed. We call it the gravito-phonetic effect. Pikovski said again, he said our solution is similar to the photoelectric effect, which is a great analogy. Our solution is similar to the photoelectric effect that led Einstein to the quantum theory of light, just with gravitational waves, replacing electromagnetic waves. The key is that the energy is exchanged between the material and the waves only in discrete steps, single gravitons are absorbed and emitted. Now that seems to seem so encouraging to me, but remember though, keep in mind this sensing technology, which they call quantum sensing does not exist yet. Do not have this level of sophistication yet in our technology, but they are nonetheless confident that this before long, we will have it. Bukowski said again, quantum jumps have been observed in materials recently, but not yet at the masses we need. He continues. We know that quantum gravity is still unsolved and it's too hard to test it in all its full glory, but we can now take the first steps just as scientists did over a hundred years ago with quanta of light. So, okay, that's, this is really fascinating. I'm really going to look, really try to follow this and hope they make some interesting progress over the next few years or so. So what would confirming the quantum nature of gravity mean? Well, obviously it would, it could be the advance that we need to show that quantum gravity, which quantum gravity model of the many that we are developing, which is the most promising and which is more likely to ultimately lead to a fully realized theory of quantum gravity, which would be awesome because I've been waiting literally for decades and I'm getting increasingly pissed off and finding a genie does not seem like it's going to happen either. So please make this happen people. I've been waiting for this quantum gravity for so long and I want to see it before I die.

S: Okay, Bob. Thanks.

B: I'm good.

News Item #4 - Dinosaur Footprints (55:30)

• Paleontologists Discover Matching Sets of Dinosaur Footprints in Africa and South America 

S: All right, this is a really cool story about dinosaur footprints.

E: We love stories about dinosaur footprints. Who doesn't? I've been loving those since I was a kid, but here's a new study that's reporting about the discovery of matching dinosaur footprints on two different continents. Oh my gosh. The footprints are believed to be of early Cretaceous dinosaurs, and the footprints were found more than 3,700 miles, which is roughly 6,000 kilometers, apart from the Abor Borima region in the northeast of Brazil and the Cooum Basin in northern Cameroon. And if you know your geography in your head, you're going to know South America and Africa. Analysis of the tracks revealed that they are similar in terms of age and geological context and almost identical in their shape. So cool.

C: So are both of those continents.

E: Absolutely. Yes, it's right. This isn't, I don't think this is a surprising result by any stretch. It just further solidifies the idea that this was once all one landmass that broke apart many hundreds of millions, a couple hundred million years ago. So yeah, the dinosaurs, what? They were three-toed theropods, but they believe also perhaps some sauropods and, oh, here's one, ornithischians were among them as well, but mostly the theropods.

S: Ornithischians are a much higher group than theropods.

E: Mostly carnivorous theropods and also sauropods or ornithischians.

S: It's just mixing up different levels because all dinosaurs are either saurischians or ornithischians, right? That's it. Those are the two branching groups of dinosaurs.

C: Yeah, bird-hipped or lizard-hipped.

E: Gotcha.

S: And then the, the lizard hips, the theropods are in the saurischians and like the triceratops.

C: Theropods and sauropods.

S: Yeah. And then the, the triceratops, I believe are in the ornithischians. It's kind of reversed because the birds evolved from the lizard hip dinosaurs.

C: Yeah, it's confusing.

E: Right.

S: But anyway, go ahead. But yeah, it's a little confusing because it's mixing up different levels.

E: Agreed. This study was published by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, and it was in attribute to the late paleontologist Martin Lockley, who spent much of his career studying dinosaur tracks and footprints. All right, I'll read you the key points from the conclusion of the actual paper. Here we go. The study places dinosaur tracks in a context to elucidate an appropriate path of biogeographical exchange between what would soon, geologically, become separate continents. Therefore, our conclusions have relevance for essentially all terrestrial biota of the existing communities at the time. However, the concept was developed with the data we have, dinosaur tracks. The puzzle-like fit and obvious proximity of the Atlantic coast of Africa and South America compel the notion of biogeographic linkages through time. That relationship is made even more plausible by the tectonics controlling the separation of the continents and the pre-existing geology. The pre-existing tectonic framework controlled the formation and structure of the sedimentary basins formed during the process of continental, rifting, and ocean formation. Yep. So they found more than 260 dinosaur footprints in both Brazil and Cameroon between them. The footprints show where the dinosaurs used to walk between South America and Africa millions of years ago, as it was all part of the same. SMU paleontologist Louis Jacobs, who was part of the study, said this. Dinosaurs made the tracks 120 million years ago on a single supercontinent known as Gondwana, which broke off from the larger landmass of Pangea. One of the youngest and narrowest geological connections between Africa and South America was the elbow of northeastern Brazil nestled against what is now the coast of Cameroon along the Gulf of Guinea. The two continents were continuous along that narrow stretch so that animals on either side of that connection could potentially move across it. Before the continental connection between Africa and South America was severed, river flows and lakes formed in the basins. Plants fed the herbivores and supported the food chain. Muddied sediments left by the rivers and lakes contained dinosaur footprints, including those of meat-eaters, documenting that these river valleys could provide specific avenues for life to travel across the continents 120 million years ago. Cool. So these dinosaur tracks in Cameroon, on the Cameroon side, they were first identified in the 1980s. But Jacobs and the other researchers decided to go back and look at them again after Martin Lockley had died, because I believe those were part of his discoveries, and they were using techniques now that weren't available at the time. That's the beautiful thing about modern science when it comes to either archaeology or paleontology, you can use new, better methods now than what was originally studied 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Big advantage there. Jacobs also said, I had not thought about dinosaur tracks in Cameroon for decades, and then just going back to them and starting to look at them and asking what they're trying to tell us, it was such a surprise to see how much had been learned in those decades and how much the story improved. That's part of the adventure. Not just paleontology, but all science. Hear, hear.

S: Yeah, this is cool. So I mean, obviously, there's lots of other lines of evidence for Pangaea like South America and Africa being connected and then splitting apart. But as far as I'm aware, previously, it's been geological and fossil evidence, right? So like there's there's basically continuity on the western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America, you could see in some places like, yeah, this is like the same rocks and sometimes the same fossil strata. This is the first I'm aware of footprints adding to that, the lines of evidence. Basically the same kind of dinosaurs at the same time were laying down tracks, again, western coast of Africa, eastern coast of South America. How cool would it be, I know this is impossible, but how cool would that be if they could identify a single dinosaur walked across like from Africa to South America? Like they could see that the tracks end on one side and pick up on the other.

E: Right, exactly. Like it had a massive foot injury that would have come out in the bridge.

S: Yeah, or something like that.

E: Right? Some defining single feature.

S: The probability of that is basically zero.

E: But I mean, the fact that they found this is remarkable.

C: I know, like the coasts.

S: Eroded.

C: Erode! I was like, evolve, no, evolve, no. Do you ever do that?

S: Yeah.

E: Yes.

S: It gets worse as you get older.

E: Yep.

C: Great.

E: Welcome to the 40s.

B: Far worse.

C: But yes, the coasts erode so much that, yeah, there'd be a big hole in the middle of that.

S: They would have had to walk really far.

C: Really far.

E: Super far, super far. I also tried to look up and see if there's any active communities or even TikTokers who sort of deny the whole continental drift. You know, facts that have been laid out over the past and built up over, oh, gosh, it's going on 120 years, if not more now, of knowing this. And I couldn't really find any other than mostly people who were talking in a biblical context young earth creationists. Those are the ones that kind of say, yeah, but-

S: They bring up the firmament.

E: Yeah. They're not they're not too loud. They're not too annoying right now on TikTok yet. So let's hope it stays that way.

S: Yeah, read the comments, though. You read the comment to anything having to do with anything astronomical, whatever. But that didn't happen on the firmament. You know, come on.

E: You can just hear it.

S: All right, thanks, Evan.

News Item #5 - Schools vs Cell Phones (1:03:28)

• Schools are competing with cellphones. Here's how they think they could win 

S: Cara, tell us about this fight between schools and cell phones.

C: Yeah, so usually when I choose a news item for the show, I look at published literature, scientific studies that have been published. It's rare that I focus on reporting, just straight reporting. But I think that this is such an important topic. And I'm I don't know, I just really want to open it up to all of you. You all have kids. I do not have kids, but I have worked in a therapeutic capacity with kids for a long time. Most of your kids are grown now. But Jay, yeah, yours are right at this age. Or they're about to be. The AP recently published an article called Schools Are Competing with Cell Phones, Here's How They Think They Could Win. It was published just a couple of days ago. And so before we even dive into like the numerous examples that they wrote about in their reporting of teachers, parents, and students themselves being like incredibly frustrated by the classroom environment, I was hoping that maybe y'all could paint a little bit of a picture of the differences. We are different generations as it is. I'm a millennial. What are you what are you guys considered?

E: X.

S: We're right-

E: I'm X.

S: Bob and I are boomers, but we're right on the edge.

C: You're on the cusp.

B: Depends how you cut off, but otherwise.

C: We'll call you elder Xers.

C: I'm an elder millennial because I'm like three years.

E: Call Bob anything but boomer.

C: And then they've got the Gen Z's who came after, and I will be referencing a study on Gen Z's, the Walton Family Foundation, Voices of Gen Z study. And then after that, I don't even know what the hell they're called. Like, what are your kids, Jay?

E: Alpha.

C: Are there alphas?

E: They're Gen Alpha, right?

J: I honestly don't know. I don't know what generation, what it's called.

C: Like the rest of y'all's kids are Gen Z, right? Yeah. Or are any of them Millennials?

S: What was the Millennial again?

C: Like 80 to like 95?

S: No, they're Gen Z-ers.

E: They're Gen Z-ers. And Alpha would be next, yeah. So, one of the alpha words these days is rizz. You ever heard that? Like, short for charisma?

C: Yes. Gibbity toy.

E: Exactly. So I say that to Rachel, who's 21, and she groans in pain.

S: Evan, you are so brat.

C: Oh no, this is going to be so embarrassing for us. Okay.

E: I love it. We are so not cool.

C: So when I was young, I did get a cell phone when I was a teenager, but I was of the era because I was born in 83, where we had pagers. Like we all had these smart beep $1.99 pagers. And so if our parents needed us, they would send us a page. And then we would find a phone and call them back. I would say cell phones became much bigger, like as I was finishing high school and definitely into college, but late middle school, early high school pagers were the thing. You guys didn't have anything like that.

E: Not during school. Not during my school. No.

C: And what about your kiddos? What about the Gen Zers? We'll start with them.

S: Yeah. So our daughters got phones at 10, I think is when we gave them phones.

E: That's about right for Rachel. It was 10 or 11.

C: And when they were in school, were there any rules about cell phones and cell phone usage? What were those rules?

S: Throughout high school, especially when they were in like middle school, they had to put their phone in their locker. They could not have it on their person in classroom during class.

C: So there was sort of a, I would assume an honor system situation. Leave it in your locker. Obviously, if we see it on your person, I know you're breaking the rules.

S: If you see it, it gets taken away from you and you get it at the end of the day.

C: No searches or anything like that.

S: No.

C: OK. Same for you, Evan and Bob. Those seem to be the rules.

E: Yeah, similar.

C: And then, Jay, your kids are young. Any insights into the rules at their schools yet?

J: So my son Dylan's 11. So he's formally starting middle school. And there has been absolutely no talk of cell phones at all previous to this year. So as far as I know, most of the kids don't have phones. It's not a thing yet. The teachers this year during orientation were like, we just straight up do not allow the kids access to their phones while school's in session.

C: Good.

J: If they need to call the parent, we'll let them go to the office and then they can use their cell phone to call the parent if they have to. They can't check cell phones, they can't text or whatever. One of my son's friends has a phone and my kids talk about getting phones all the time and my wife and I are like, it's probably going to be not too far away from when you start driving.

C: Right. That's about when I got my phone. It was about when I was driving, and it was like one of those Nokia's that you could play snake on, you know. Didn't do much. Couldn't text, that's for sure. So you wouldn't even spend a lot of time on your phone because it was for calling. Like that's what we actually use them for.

B: Boring.

C: Boring. Today, kids phones are on social media. They're on the internet, right? Like they can do anything and everything on their phones. They can watch television. Educators kind of across the country are complaining that students just aren't engaged at school. Not only are there kind of spikes in mental health issues, especially around COVID, they're struggling with difficult attention shortens attention spans. Attendance is not great. Great academic performance is changing. And I think I'd be curious to just go see what a classroom looks like now versus the classrooms that we were in. The feedback that I'm reading about in a lot of these articles, and also that I'm hearing about from parents when I'm working with kids, is that the kids are just straight up disengaged at school. That there's not nearly the connection and the attention that teachers were used to, and that the way that they used to write their lesson plans is not working. And so we're starting to see, as you guys mentioned, more and more cell phone bans. But a lot of teachers and administrators are saying that they're not enough. They think that obviously alternatives to cell phones, like methods for keeping kids more engaged, like having more outdoor time, spending more time in interactive classroom settings, as opposed to just the kind of didactic teacher at the front, students all facing the teacher structure isn't really working, or would be working if we if we did it more. There's also been have any of your kiddos talked about like the, the cell phone pouches and the bins kind of like the ones they do it in court. That's apparently a thing. Yeah, where there are these pouches that they have to lock their phones in. And then the teacher or the principal has the magnetic key that unlocks it. Because the problem is that if you say leave your phone in your locker, they don't do it. They keep it on their body and then they text under the table. And so kids still have their phones on them.

B: That's what I do.

C: Yeah. And these phones, I mean, think about us at home. Think about adults. We are not in school. Think about us at work. Think about all the times that our phones are competing for our attention.

E: That's why I leave mine on silent. I can't. It would be so distracting. So distracting.

B: I just embrace the distraction.

C: Put yourself in the shoes of a child whose frontal lobe is not fully developed. Of a child who is struggling to try and fit in, who is struggling because they have so many pressures on them and they have this little box and this little box offers them a distraction. It offers them an escape. It offers them instant gratification, it offers them comfort, it offers them connection, it offers them respite from all the stressors that they're experiencing at school. It's become, I don't even like to use the word addiction, it's something beyond that because it's almost universal. It's hard to call it an addiction, it's the culture. And so yes, locking up even smartwatches, headphones, other electronics and engaging in different things. Like there's an initiative in Washington, I think they're calling Engage IRL, which is like an initiative to try and give students something to look forward to after school. Because even if students are keeping their cell phones out of the classroom, the second class is over their faces are down. They're walking through the halls glued to their phone. The second school is out they're going straight to their phones. They're not going to dance class. They're not going to football practice. Some still are, but a lot of kids are struggling with that motivation. And that brings me to that study that I mentioned, the Walton Family Foundation. This is an initiative through Gallup. So Gallup puts on this poll, and they asked Gen Zers, so I want to give you the parameters of the kids in this. A sample of 2,271 Gen Z respondents. So these were 12 to 18 year old kiddos, and then also 18 to 26 year olds after that, so they were able to kind of compare. When they divided students between two groups, very unhappy, somewhat unhappy, or neither happy nor unhappy. So that's kind of the neutral to unhappy group versus the very happy or somewhat happy. So these are students who responded in this way. 60% of the happy students said that they feel motivated to go to school. Guess what percent of the unhappy students said they're motivated to go to school?

S: 20.

C: 31. Pretty low. And it's really sad when you dig deeper into some of the questions like, I feel like I do something interesting every day, or I feel motivated to go. I feel like when I'm there, I'm doing something important. You know, kids that are in, just across the board, kids that are enrolled in high school or middle school only, 52% feel like they're doing something interesting every day. 51% feel like the things that they do at school are important. Only 48% across the board, that's the average of the statistics I just read you, 48% feel motivated to go to school. And a lot of teachers and a lot of administrators are starting to support the idea that cell phones have become this massive sticking point. And so what do we do about it, right? Recently, I think it was just this week, the governor here in California, Gavin Newsom, he started to make a big push to ask school districts to restrict their cell phone use, like this would be coming from the government, not just be these individual school mandates. We're seeing that more and more states are pushing for legislation to ban cell phone use. And then here's an interesting angle that the AP reported on that I didn't even think about. I mentioned getting outside. I mentioned not using the phones in school or just not even having access to the phones at school. But here's another angle. Stop texting your children throughout the day to check in on them. Apparently more and more kids are reporting that their parents send them check-in texts throughout the day, and that's distracting them, but it's also pulling them out of the school environment and back into the home setting throughout the day. So here's a quote from a teacher at Westerville North High School in Columbus, Ohio. Students are so tied to their families, there's this anxiety of not being able to contact them rather than appreciating the freedom of being alone for eight hours or with your friends. Isn't that heartbreaking to hear? It's like just such a different environment than the environment that we grew up in where like, our parents trusted that we were okay because we were at school. And we were happy to be free and we were truly free because we weren't constantly looking at our phones, we weren't constantly engaged in social media and texting. I remember working with a family where the daughter had like pretty severe ADHD and we were trying to come up with token economies and different ways that we could reduce her cell phone usage at school because it was really negatively impacting her grades and her engagement at school. And I remember talking to mom and mom was so concerned and she was like, but how can I tell her otherwise when I can't do it myself? I can't leave my phone in the other room. She sees me on my phone all day long. It's become like a generational problem, and I think we forget or we struggle to put ourselves in the shoes of our kids and think about how hard that would be if we had that same issue. So I don't know, it's something to think about, right? I don't want to call it an unsolvable problem, but it's a problem that's not solved right now.

S: There's trade-offs. It's like that political saying, there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs, right? So we just have to decide what the trade-offs are going to be. I have to say, you talk about parents texting their kids, there have been a few occasions, we didn't do this on a regular basis. Every now and then something comes up, we're like, it would really be logistically helpful if I can contact my daughter at school right now to let her know we have to pick you up to go to the doctor's office or whatever. There's something going on and it is very convenient and somewhat annoying. It was like, oh, she doesn't have her phone on her because they took her from her. So we have no way of getting in touch with her and it just makes your day harder or whatever because it's just logistically it would be very convenient. So I get that, but you're right.

C: Talk about the trade-off, right?

S: It's a trade-off.

C: What would your mom have done if she needed to pick you up to go to the doctor?

S: Yeah, but see, that's unfair because we did not grow up in a two-working parent family. We had a full-time mother.

C: Well, you're right. That's not fair. Okay. Let me ask myself a question.

S: Both parents are at work, and we have to juggle this problem of who's going to do what. Anyway...

C: No, but I guess I was trying to lead to an answer.

S: Yeah, go ahead.

C: If I were to ask myself what would my mom, who is a single working mom, do if she needed to pick me up from school early? She would call the front office.

S: Yeah.

C: She would call the front office and say, hey, I need to pick my kid up early for school. Can somebody inform her?

S: Yeah, obviously we did whatever we had to do, right? There were other options.

C: Exactly.

S: I forget the exact scenarios, but again, just worse situations where it absolutely would have been very convenient to be able to contact her.

C: Sure, but is that one convenience twice a year worth the terrible trade-off.

S: No, it's just annoying when it happens, but I hear you. It's also you ask us what we model for our kids. Like, when we are having dinner at a restaurant or something together, or at home whatever, it's no cell phones, right? Everyone puts their cell phones down. We all want to check our phones, you know what I mean? But if we do it, then our kids will immediately do it, and they're lost in their phones. So we have to just keep each other honest and say, yeah, no cell phones at dinner. This is family time. We talk to each other. So you have to put limits, and that's what the pediatric recommendations are. Not so much to limit screen time, but to maximize non-screen time.

C: A hundred percent.

S: Yeah, which is a little bit different.

C: It's a different framing. It's the same thing at school, right? The issue is not that the phones themselves are bad for the kids. The issue is that the phones are preventing the kids from learning. They're preventing the kids from paying attention during the day. And that's an important point to make. And I think also to your point, Steve. Like for everybody listening to this right now and really sitting with it and chewing on it, put yourselves, really try to exercise empathy and put yourselves in the shoes of your child. And then ask yourself, when I get angry at them for their relationship with their phone, am I being fair? Am I modeling terrible behavior and expecting them to somehow have more capability to inhibit themselves than I do, because that's unfair. We need to be modeling this kind of good behavior, but it starts with us.

B: I got to tell you, my daughter with her phone is a mutant. I could text her and it could be a couple of days. She makes a concerted effort to not make that phone an addiction or something that she needs to obsessively check. I don't know how she does it.

C: Put her in the Department of Education.

B: I'm proud of her. And it's like, that's great. And that's something I could never do.

C: Yeah, yeah. And no 12 year old is going to be able to do that, not without a lot of support and a lot of boundaries. And they start with you. And I think that that also leads to, and we've talked about this before on the show, we cannot expect school to completely save a child from their home environment. Like, yes, it is a massive respite for a lot of kids who are going through stuff and like, thank goodness for that. But if a child is wildly shifting between specific boundaries at school and specific boundaries at home, and that inconsistency is there day to day to day. That's also not conducive to kind of establishing good behaviors. So if you expect school to do it, try and try and maintain the same boundary at home.

S: Yeah. All right. Thanks, Cara.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:21:05)

S: Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.

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

E: He has a theremin quality to it.

J: Cara, what do you hear?

C: It's like a, like a, I don't know, some sort of animal playing kazoo. No?

J: All right. That's interesting. Bob, you got anything?

C: Nobody guessed that. That's surprising.

B: Nothing. I got nothing.

J: All right. Well, a listener named Benjamin de Vult. Benjamin, I have a deficit here. He says, Hi, Jay. Been here. The French guy in Kyoto. Is it Kyoto?

S: Kyoto.

J: I got it. See that? Not bad. He said, Well, this is the theremin. No doubt about that. I just hope you don't need more info like how the sounds were made by moving hands really fast. And then he said, I assume a lot of people will guess correctly and Cara will be happy. You are incorrect. I knew that I was going to get theremin as a guess, but it's fine. You know, that is a good default for that type of sound. I have another listener here named Shane Hillier. Shane says, Jasoph. This is for sure the world's premier squeaky balloon player. You guys know how to play squeaky balloon?

C: Yeah.

J: Okay. Yeah, he describes it, but you can make lots of different sounds with that, but that is not it either. Another listener named Adam Hill wrote in and said, Hello, Jay. This week's Who's That Noisy sounds like a theremin. Specifically, it sounds like the Curiosity rover on Mars is going a little stir crazy and started singing to itself in odd bleeps and bloops. I added that one in because Adam said that the Mars the Curiosity rover in Mars is going crazy and making funny noises. That would be hysterical if they queued sounds like this when things started to go badly and just started to kind of make funny noises and flash. I don't know. I just think that's funny. Another listener named Brian A wrote in and said, this is someone playing a flute made from a plastic drinking straw. You flatten one end, cut it to a triangular point, add a few holes to change the notes, then proceed to annoy the hell out of everyone. I have never done that. It sounds like fun, but that is not correct. All right, I have a listener from last week. The listener's name is Griffin Adams, and Griffin guesses it's a glissotar. It's a glissotar, guys. You know what that is?

C: No.

E: Something Star Trek.

J: So, a glissotar is the first member of the glissonic instrument family designed to give wind players unprecedented flexibility with glissando. You guys know what glissando is?

C: Mmm. That's like a... Yeah, it's a music notation, but I don't think you can do it with a voice, can you?

J: It's called a continuous slide upward or downward between two notes.

C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

J: So like sliding the notes.

C: I was thinking sforzando, which is like loud and then quiet and all that.

J: So this instrument has a magnetic strap instead of keys, and the glissotar gives its user this vast range of new playing possibilities. And as you heard, and I'll play the audio again, there's lots of different sounds coming out of this thing. So it's based on the soprano saxophone. It's made of amaranth, which is a naturally purple wood, and it has a range of 2.5 octaves, two octave keys, and can be used with a soprano saxophone mouthpiece. Check it out, this is basically a new instrument.

B: Kind of annoying.

J: It is a little annoying.

B: Kind of annoying, kind of like Cara's statement about candy corn. Four things, Cara. Four things I just researched. Gen X is the most likely to enjoy eating candy corn with 58%. FYI.

E: Not boomers. Yeah, not boomers, Cara.

B: Well, the fact that boomers were slightly less than 56 is irrelevant. Candy corn is slightly less popular, slightly less popular with younger generations. Ahem. And two more, halfway done. Americans hate to receive candy corn the most on Halloween, I guess compared to other. And my favorite factoid or fact, whatever, California residents consume more than any other state.

C: Interesting.

E: But that, because the population is more than any other state.

B: Biggest consumer.

S: Is that per capita or total?

E: I bet you they consume a million other things.

S: Bob, was that per capita or total?

B: That's all I got, friend.

E: Well, the capita of California is Sacramento.

S: You have to qualify your statistic, Bob. That's a worthless statistic.

B: I have a new name for you guys.

B: I still love saying it.

C: Did you say people on average hate receiving candy?

B: It said Americans hate to receive candy corn the most. So I guess other countries like it more than we do.

S: When you say receive, you mean when you're trick-or-treating?

C: He said on Halloween.

B: Yeah, that's right.

E: Yes.

S: On Halloween, they're vague. Specifically trick-or-treating or just at any time you're late.

B: Americans hate to receive candy corn the most.

[Jay plays some noises]

Americans hate to receive candy corn the most. That's got to be trick-or-treating.

C: Poor Jay.

E: We're off the rails here.

S: That could be because-

B: Mostly Americans trick-or-treat, not other countries.

J: Bob!

E: Here we go.

J: Cara is in her house, and she accidentally eats candy corn.

B: Yes.

E: What do you mean?

C: Yeah, that would be my reaction.

S: But my point is, Bob, they may not like getting it for trick-or-treat because it's loose, not because they don't like candy corn. You don't want to get a bunch of candy. You want to get something that's pretty round.

C: No, it's because candy corn is awful, objectively.

B: No, nobody gives out candy corn to little bags.

C: Hey, guys, write us some emails. Let us know.

S: Have you ever had the chocolate candy corn? Those are good.

E: Yes, they do have flavors. Those are good.

C: No.

E: What do you mean no?

B: Hey, it's not my favorite. You can give me peanut butter cup any damn day, and that's top of the list.

S: Cara, if you're dexterous, you can pretend that the candy corn are your canine teeth.

C: This is such an interesting window into your childhood.

E: Kids love those Nesco wafers, the candy of the year from 1921.

B: Oh my gosh. They are nasty and chalky, and my mom loves them.

J: They are nasty.

E: Exactly, right? Generational.

C: Yep. So Jay.

S: Hey, do you have a new noisy?

E: Oh, Jay, yeah. Where have you been?

J: I have a noisy. This is from a listener named Candice Dennison. [plays Noisy] I picked this one, Bob, because it's a great sound for Halloween.

B: My God, yeah.

S: I know what it is.

�E: I know what it is, too.

S: It's a soundscape from Dagobah.

E: It's a bunch of crickets with something else making a noise over the noisy.

J: I had to whack back the crickets. The crickets were crazy loud.

E: I told you it was a cricket noisy.

J: But, Bob, yeah. You know, when I reveal this next week, I'll tell you all about it. Like, this is a really cool sound to use. So, anyway, guys, if you think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, you can email me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org. We have events coming up. We will be at CSICon. That is going to be the last weekend of October. Correct, Steve?

E: Yes.

J: And the web address for that is what, Steve?

S: CSIConference.org.

J: We will be having a private SGU podcast recording on December 6th. That's Friday. And then we will be having an extravaganza on Saturday the 7th. You could buy tickets right now for the extravaganza. That is up on our website, the private show. I'm hoping, again, like I said last week, like within a week I should have the link up there so you guys can start buying tickets for that as well. And, Steve, NOTACON 2025.

S: Yep. Preliminary discussions are happening.

J: Preliminary discussions have happened. Right now the preliminary weekend is May 16th. That's the weekend I'm shooting for. I'm talking to hotels right now. So I'm hoping within a week or two I'll be able to lock something in.

E: Okay.

S: All right. Thank you, Jay.

C: Exciting.

Emails (1:26:54)

S: One or two e-mail, depending how long it takes. First one comes from a listener. And they write, the slippery slope is technically an informal logical fallacy, but in American politics has it become more like a tactic? In the early 1990s I considered myself in the center of the political spectrum. Without moving my own thinking much, I am now leaning far out to the left. The point of that is that I have watched certain issues and it does seem that both sides, with the right being more successful, have used wedge issue laws and rulings to move the acceptable point of view, then pushed for stronger, more partisan laws. So is the slippery slope becoming an intentional tactic? Well.

C: Is he talking about the Overton window? That's kind of different than slippery slope.

S: Yeah. I mean the Overton window is just the range of political – the spectrum of political opinions depends on where your center is, like where you are.

C: Right. And as that shifts.

S: What we consider left is actually a little bit to the right in Europe.

C: Totally. It's a good example.

S: But I think his core point here is the slippery slope, an intentional tactic that is used in politics. I think what he's saying is it becoming intentional. It's always been intentional. I don't think this is anything new. This is going back as far as I can remember where slippery slope – so the slippery slope logical fallacy, again, informal logical fallacies are context dependent and not absolute. So that doesn't mean that every argument that takes this form is necessarily unsound. But it becomes a logical fallacy when you take it to extremes. And basically the format of the slippery slope fallacy is that, well, if we allow for something to a certain degree, it will necessarily go to the extreme along some spectrum that I'm determining.

C: Right, like the most famous and insulting was around the debate around gay marriage. And we would see people go, well, once you can marry the same sex, you're gonna be able to marry dogs and stuff.

S: Yeah exactly. If we open it up to same-sex marriage, then people will be marrying animals down there. That's a classic slippery slope argument. Or it's like, well, if you pass a seatbelt law, then what's the next thing they're going to be mandating? Then they'd be coming into your home and whatever, getting more and more intrusion.

C: Right, if we have gun regulation, they're going to take our guns.

S: Yeah, it's like if you give an inch, then necessarily they're going to take a mile. And it's the necessarily part that makes it a logical fallacy, or that anywhere along that spectrum necessarily leads to the most extreme part of that spectrum.

C: Steve, that's not a bug. That's a feature. That's what logical fallacies by definition are. They're argument techniques that have the potential to be not sound, but they are often used in rhetoric. That's the whole point.

S: Framing that slightly differently, I think what you're saying is that rhetorical strategies often deliberately use informal logical fallacies in order to make arguments that serve an end, that end not being logic and the truth, but being a point, right? So lawyers do this all the time.

C: Changing people's behavior, like literally persuading people.

S: Right. Lawyers do this all the time. They will use arguments they don't necessarily have to agree with. That's not their job to make a correct point. Their job is to defend their client, whatever that is, and their client's interests. And they use any argument they think they can get away with, basically, whether or not it's strictly logically valid or not.

C: Right. That doesn't matter. A lawyer can't go, objection, slippery slope.

S: Right, right.

C: Overruled.

E: I'm going to allow it.

S: So, yeah, I think, yeah, within politics, I think it's I say both despise and I'm fascinated by politics. I despise the fact that it is an inherently an illogical endeavor in that the persuasion is prioritized over all else. Rather than the truth or finding common groung or honesty or virtue. Although people – politicians do take different strategies. There are sort of virtue-based politicians, et cetera. But generally speaking, the center of gravity of political speech is persuasive, whether or not it's scientific or logically valid. I find that annoying. But I also find it fascinating because it is sort of its own logical game, and it's good to dissect what are they doing, what is the logical error they are making in service to their political ideology. It's a great, target-rich environment for a name-that-logical-fallacy kind of endeavor. And this is one. So I agree with the observation, I just think that this is, as far as I can tell, this has always been going on, using the slippery slope. And as Cara says, other logical fallacies for rhetorical advantage is as old as politics.

C: Yeah, it's as old as people arguing.

S: Yeah. Exactly.

C: That's why we had to identify them.

S: Right.

C: Like that's why you take a course in logic in college.

S: You should, not everybody does.

C: Yeah, not everybody does. But that's why one takes a course in college is to learn when arguments aren't sound.

S: All right, let's go on with science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:34:58)

Theme: None Item #1: A new study finds that substituting “team nursing”, substituting lower-wage staff for some RNs, can save hospitals significant operating costs without any adverse effect on outcomes. Item #2: Researchers find that pet dogs trained on soundboards are able to recognize and respond appropriately to spoken words, even if produced by a soundboard or someone who is not their owner, without any non-verbal cues. Item #3: NASA scientists have demonstrated for the first time the existence of a global electrostatic field.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Item #1
Science	Item #2
Science	Item #3

Host	Result
Steve

Rogue	Guess

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

S: Each week, I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake. Just three regular news items this week. You guys ready?

J: Yup.

S: Item number one, a new study finds that substituting team nursing, substituting lower wage staff for some RNs, can save hospitals significant operating costs without any adverse effects on outcomes. Item number two, researchers find that pet dogs trained on sound boards are able to recognize and respond appropriately to spoken words, even if produced by a sound board or someone who is not their owner, without any nonverbal cues. And item number three, NASA scientists have demonstrated for the first time the existence of a global electrostatic field. And yes, I do mean on Earth. Jay, go first.

J: A new study finds that substituting team nursing, substituting lower wage staff for some RNs, that's a registered nurse, saves hospitals significant operating costs without any adverse effects on outcomes.

C: So you're saying taking an LVN out and putting an RN in her place, for example?

S: No, no. The opposite. So instead of having six nurses, you have four nurses, but they're less expensive and less trained helpers.

C: I see. So instead of six RNs, you've got four RNs and two clinical partners.

S: Or three or four clinical partners.

C: Or whatever. Okay, okay. That makes sense.

B: Or more.

C: Now I get it. The sum cost of their salaries is lower I'm assuming.

J: So you're replacing one RN with a lower-waged group of people and it's basically roughly the same care.

S: Sort of. Yeah.

B: Right.

J: Okay. All right.

C: I think the important... Sorry, I just have to clarify one more thing. Does that mean there are no RNs anymore?

S: No.

C: Or does that just mean some of the RNs?

S: Some. It says some RNs right in there.

J: Okay. Second one. These researchers found that pet dogs trained on soundboards are able to recognize and respond appropriately to spoken words, even if produced by a soundboard or someone who is not their owner, without any nonverbal cues. All right, so I've seen video of this and I question it because they're showing you the dog stepping on these buttons on the floor, like these bigger buttons, and it can communicate via these sounds that the buttons make. But you're saying that this one is a soundboard where the dog's going to respond appropriately to spoken words even if produced by the soundboard? It's like the opposite, like the soundboard is telling them to do something, Steve, and they're responding to it?

S: It's the dog responding to the soundboard, not the dog operating the soundboard, yeah.

J: Gotcha, gotcha, okay.

S: Basically, the point of that is to eliminate the nonverbal cues.

J: Exactly, exactly. I mean, my gut is telling me that the nonverbal cues are important. I mean, my dog is always looking at my face. And I notice my dog looks at my hands a lot. So that one's a maybe for me. The last one, NASA scientists have demonstrated for the first time the existence of a global electrostatic field. Oh, boy. That's where supervillains come from.

E: Well, only the Shocker and Static Boy.

J: Static boy. Yeah.

B: Magneto hates it.

J: Leave my balloons alone. I think that that's possible, a global electrostatic field. That's interesting and possible, I think. Something about the nonverbal cues of the dog is rubbing me the wrong way. I wouldn't say that one's a fiction.

S: OK, Evan.

E: Registered nurses, RNs can save hospitals significant operating costs.

C: These are my O.R. shoes. O.R. they. Anybody remember that?

E: Rushmore. I love Wes Anderson films, they're great. But in any case, this one, I don't know. So what? We're talking about substituting... RNs have specific skills, right? So if you're going to have the team nursing, you kind of, I don't know, does that somehow dilute the skill sets that an RN would otherwise bring somehow? Without any adverse effects or outcomes. That's pretty, oh boy, without any. I don't know. I don't know. That one's tricky. But the dog one as well is tricky as well. There's a lot going on here in this because it's about the soundboards, okay? Even if produced by a soundboard or someone else who's not their owner without any nonverbal cues. So, whoa. We're thinking of the Clever Hans example maybe here, which is sort of the famous example in history about animals taking subtle cues from their trainers or whomever. So that came to mind. This would mean this goes around. Dogs are incredible and they're learning so much more about the capabilities. And the brains of dogs and what they comprehend and what they understand and what they feel. This would be an amazing discovery for an already amazing species of animal. And then the last one about the first time ever for the global electrostatic field. This doesn't have to do with like the... The harmonics of the Earth, that whole 384 MHz thing, I don't think it has to do with that, which a lot of nonsense and garbage products are all based on, like wristwatches in harmony with the Earth and stuff. I hope it has nothing to do with that. These are tough. I think the nurse's one, though, I think of the three of these is going to be the one that's the fiction because without any adverse effects on outcomes, any? That's absolute. I just don't know if that's the case. So I think that one's the fiction.

S: Okay, Bob.

B: Alright, the global electrostatic field. That's possible. That one's not really rubbing me the wrong way like the other two. The nurse one, I could make sense of that in my mind because the RNs have a range of skills. Some are very dependent on education, others less so. I would think that offloading some of the easier tasks to unqualified RNs, if you will, could potentially allow the RNs to focus on the most important and more technical tasks and offloading the easier tasks to less experienced people. I could see how that would make sense. It's seems possible, but it depends. If the hospital is busy and you're down a qualified RN, then that would be a drawback for sure no matter how many non-RNs you have. And the dog one, I could see that as well. I don't think verbal cues, I don't think nonverbal cues are absolutely critical. I mean, I think if you train a dog with the nonverbal cues in a specific setting, that they would become used to that as well. And I think they're smart enough to go just by the audible component, regardless of any nonverbal impact. So I could see that. Nothing's like any red sirens are going off for either of these. But I got to pick one of the other.

S: Yes, you do.

B: I'll go with the nurse section. OK.

S: All right, Cara.

C: So I don't know on the global electrostatic field, but everybody else said that they think it's science. And I trust your global electrostatic field knowledge more than my own. So I'm going to say that one's science. I'm gonna pick the nurses as the fiction for this reason. I, number one, I have friends who's, I have a friend who trained her dog to retrieve a bunch of different toys. And it's like impressive. And maybe there's a slight change in her tone when she says them, but really like her I think there's 15 different toys and her dog knows the name of them. She can say, get the fox, and it gets the fox out of the other room. And to me, that shows at least some ability to break down something about the phonemes and that it's not just tone. The RN one, I mean, think about a hospital. It's a well-oiled machine. It doesn't always work well-oiled, but that's the hope, right? And when I think about the hospital where I work, one RN per patient in the ICU, usually one RN per four patients in the quads on the floor. Making it so that it's one RN per two patients in the ICU with a few other clinical staff means that there are skills that are no longer present. And that worries me a lot. The gestalt there is that you can't add up three people who do something very specific and it'll equal one person who does something else that's very specific. We have specific jobs and titles for a reason. Other people who do other things that are specific are not equivalent if you just add them up. And so I'm going to say that that one's a fiction.

S: All right, so you all agree with the third one, so we'll start there. NASA scientists have demonstrated for the first time the existence of a global electrostatic field. You guys all think this one is science? The question is, did they find it, and is this the first time? Maybe this is something we've known about for decades. This one is... Science. This is science.

E: First time.

S: It is. So we thought maybe there might be one, but we had no evidence that there was electrostatic global field. NASA was able to demonstrate it for the first time. The name of the study is Earth's Ambipolar Electrostatic Field and its Role in Ion Escape to Space. So we know that there is, for example, this ions escaping through the poles. It's kind of like our equivalent of a same thing as a streaming of ions out of the Earth going through the poles. And we can't really fully account for this by the magnetic field. So there was suspicion that there might be a global electrostatic field, but it wasn't really known. But they were able to measure it. It's plus 0.55 plus or minus 0.09 volts electrostatic potential drop between 250 kilometers and 768 kilometers from a planetary electrostatic field.

B: Cool, man.

S: Yeah, it generates an outward pressure on ionospheric electrons. Yeah, very cool. So we'll add that to the earth's gravitational field and its magnetic field and now also an electrostatic field. Bob, why is there no gravito superhero? Or gravito. There's a magneto, right? There's a lot of electricity-based superheroes. Why no gravito?

B: I've heard of gravidometric as a word.

S: I'm saying a superhero.

C: He's talking about a superhero.

S: Gravity-based superhero.

E: Yeah, it's too weak.

B: Because they're too weak.

C: And even if it wasn't too weak, would you really want to walk in and just have things stick to you?

S: No, not necessarily. But let's say, you know-

C: Oh, you're not the gravity.

S: No, but if you could control gravity, you could make people just crush them by increasing their local gravitational field.

C: Yeah, that'd be kind of cool.

B: That'd be a great name.

C: It'd implode people.

E: Well, I mean, they'd probably be the best-looking superhero because they're so attractive.

S: They have a lot of gravitas.

B: Ha, nice. He's willing to say that.

S: Let's go back to item number one. A new study finds that substituting team nursing, substituting lower wage staff for some RNs can save hospitals significant operating costs without any adverse effect on outcomes. Bob, Evan, Cara, you think this one is fiction. Jay, you think this one is science. So, Bob, what you said is that's the other point of view, right? And that is exactly the logic that was used in order to try out this model, this alternate model of staffing.

B: Yeah.

S: That you have—why pay nurses to do things that a medical assistant could be doing or an LPN could be doing?

B: Exactly. It seems reasonable.

S: It seems perfectly reasonable.

C: But we don't do that, do we? We pay medical assistants to do things medical assistants can do.

S: Yeah, but I'm saying if you have a nurse who's in charge of a patient, they're doing everything, right?

C: I guess, not where I work. They also have medical assistance.

S: So what do you think? Then that model would work if that's what you're saying?

C: No, I'm saying that if you take the model that is working and then you dilute it even more, it is dangerous.

S: Well, this one is the fiction. But Cara, even what you're describing, so like at Yale, for example, 20 years ago, we went to the team nursing model and it was an absolute disaster. It was not good. And because there was basically a shortage of nurses as a result. And what the study found was that there is a lot of adverse effects when you go to this model, not only on patient care, but on the bottom line for hospitals.

C: Oh, interesting. They lose money.

S: They lose money, absolutely.

C: Isn't that just always how it goes? People think they're cutting corners and they're actually costing themselves more.

S: So what they found was a 10 percentage point reduction in RNs, so just 10% fewer RNs was associated with a 7% higher odds of in-hospital death, 1% odds of readmission, 2% increase in expected delays, lower patient satisfaction, and would result nationwide in 10,947 avoidable deaths annually and roughly cost Medicare $68.5 million annually.

C: Wow.

S: This is pretty much exactly what we experienced. I think a lot of hospitals probably had their own experience with this. It's not just like what skills were you expressly trained in. It's also your overall knowledge and ability.

C: Yeah, it's your competence.

S: There is a benefit to having even somebody who's overqualified, intimately involved with every aspect of care. And not, as you say, diluting. Because then also when you add team members, now you add another layer of communication and coordination that adds complexity to the whole thing. That every one of those layers is an opportunity for mistakes to happen or miscommunications, etc. It's just better to just pay a lot of nurses to do nursing work. They are highly trained, highly skilled, and highly valuable in the clinical setting. And it was basically a failed experiment trying to dilute the nursing staff to save money.

C: Now I want Medicare to do the same study for psychologists so that we can stop having to prove why we matter. We're good for reducing readmission.

S: Pretty much whenever, I mean, over the years I've looked at many, many studies looking at comparisons between more specialized, higher trained medical staff at every level versus more generalists or lesser trained. And the more specialist, higher trained staff always has better outcomes, right? Even like within neurology, obviously I'm very familiar with the neurological literature, if you compare stroke outcomes from a patient being admitted to a general neurology service versus a patient being admitted to a stroke specialty service, the stroke outcomes are better. And even if the MD staff is the same, if you admit them to a stroke floor with stroke nurses, the outcome is better than if you admit them to just a general medical floor with nurses who are not specifically trained or experienced dealing with strokes. So the experience and expertise actually matters for patient outcomes. There's just no substitute for that. Alright, this means that researchers find that pet dogs trained on soundboards are able to recognize and respond appropriately to spoken words, even if produced by a soundboard or someone who is not their owner without any nonverbal cues is science, because dogs do understand words in the absence of intonation or nonverbal cues. However, Jay, when I was researching this, I looked at a bunch of those same dogs trained on soundboard videos, and they are all bullshit.

C: Yeah, there's so much bullshit.

S: I didn't buy a single one of them. Take a look at them and tell me what you think. Basically, on one of them, there's maybe 20 buttons spread out on the floor, and they're paw-sized so the dog can put their paw on it to activate it. And the owner is like expectantly asking their dog a question. Do you what do you want to do? You know, what do you want? And then the dog hits a button and whatever button they hit is like appropriate for a dog, right? It's not like there's some crazy things on there. It's like it says like outside, food, walk, scratchy, whatever. Anything that dog hits, the bones like, you want food? OK, here's the food.

C: And of course, the dog is like, I'm thrilled. I like all of my chores.

S: It's like you can't go wrong. But the owner just interprets whatever button the dog presses and makes it make sense. You know what I mean? They're doing all the cognitive work. In one of the videos, the dog is sitting in front of the soundboard. The owner, again, asks him a question. And the dog puts his paw out without looking on the closest button to him. That was it. He didn't go up and down the board and go to the one button that he liked. It happened to be the one that was right in front of his paw, and he didn't even look at the board. You know what I mean? He just put his paw down and got his reward, whatever that was. So that's the level that we're talking about. It's just owners completely over interpreting what the dog is doing. And I just didn't buy any of the videos that I saw. Even when we're also we're seeing selected videos we don't know how long it takes for them to get that activity.

C: Yeah, it's like a trick shot video. Like, I love trick shot videos on YouTube.

S: Yeah, but you have no idea how many times they fail.

C: That's the 77th try.

S: But even if that's not the case you know, I think the dogs learn to engage in behavior which gets them rewards and that includes putting their paws on these buttons. It doesn't mean that they're communicating to you, you know.

C: Oh, for sure. You could do the exact same, like the YouTube videos you're talking about, you could do those with a mouse. You could do those with a chipmunk. Like you can train any animal to press a bar-

S: And get a reward. Right.

C: Yeah. Like it's a lab animal 101.

S: But there was no evidence in the videos I saw that there was any specificity to what the dogs were doing.

C: No, and sometimes it literally is like a fortune cookie. Like the buttons will say things like, mom, sad, go. And it'll be like, mom, sad, go. Mom is sad when she goes.

S: Yeah, exactly. That's what was happening. That was exactly what was happening. They just anthropomorphize and interpret whatever buttons the dog hit in some way, and then the dog gets some reward. Yeah, basically. And again, if there's more impressive performances out there, why aren't those the videos that are being uploaded to social media, right? You would think that this is if there was a really impressive one out there that we would be seeing it, but what I was seeing was not convincing in the slightest. But having said that, I believe that dogs do understand words even without intonation. I know it's hard anecdotally as a dog owner to really know, but we try to test it out. Our dog knows the word walk. He just does. And if we say it even without addressing it to the dog or without any intonation, he reacts the same way, basically.

C: Yeah, I've seen that with a lot of friends, especially with herding dogs and really intelligent dogs that are very high energy. They'll have to be careful like, guys, do you want to go on a drive? Like they cannot say it. They're like, oh, I don't want to freak out my dog.

S: Exactly. That's the same thing. And we inadvertently trigger him sometimes. We're just talking and we mentioned the word and he's like, it's all excited. Like, oh, crap, I said the word like we're not even trying to communicate with him. But yeah, and he is a herder. He's a very smart dog.

C: Yeah, cute.

S: Yeah, yeah. No, it's cute. But of course, then we could also use that. Like we know, like we can get them all excited just by saying, do you want to go for a walk? And then he just goes crazy. It's fun. That's a lot of fun. But yeah, it's so easy to over interpret what your dogs can understand.

C: Especially, yeah, your dog. You love them.

S: Yeah, absolutely.

C: They're a reflection of you.

S: I mean, they evolved to touch our heartstrings, absolutely. And the other thing is that they have we talked before about the fact that dogs have a high neuronal density and that they have, they do they did evolve to have a very, to be very in tune socially with their owners. That was their survival strategy, right? It was to make us care about them and feed them and incorporate them into our lives and our villages and et cetera, and it worked. And so I do think that they are very, very sensitive to human social cues, human communication. And they certainly figure out how to make their wants known to us.

C: Totally.

S: Okay. Good job, everyone.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:56:42)

"Sometimes scientists change their minds. New developments cause a rethink. If this bothers you, consider how much damage is being done to the world by people for whom new developments do NOT cause a rethink."  – - Terry Pratchett, (description of author)

S: Evan, you got a quote for us?

E: I do. This week's quote was suggested by a listener, Nicholas from Denmark. Who says he's a big fan of the show, been listening to every new episode since first finding the podcast, although he doesn't say when he found the podcast, but in any case, thank you. And here is the quote. "Sometimes scientists change their minds. New developments cause a rethink. If this bothers you, consider how much damage is being done to the world by people for whom new developments do not cause a rethink." And that was written by Terry Pratchett back in 2002.

S: Wow.

E: Wrote that. And my gosh, this could have been written yesterday.

C: And it could have been written 1,000 years ago, too.

S: Yeah, 2,000 years ago.

C: The universal truth.

S: Absolutely. I know, it's always weird to me when people try to shame other people for changing their mind. Like, you call it flip-flopping or whatever.

C: It's a weird political strategy.

S: It's like, yeah, new information came along and I changed my mind to accommodate new facts. What do you do when you're confronted with new facts? But yeah, again, it gets back to in politics, anything could be made into a positive or a negative, depending on what side it's on. Anything. Anything could be spun, yeah. All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.

J: You got it, Steve.

C: Thanks, Steve.

E: Thanks, Steve.

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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