SGU Episode 654

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SGU Episode 654
January 20th 2018
The Black Death in Medieval Europe
SGU 653                      SGU 655
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
RW: Richard Wiseman, British author
Quote of the Week
Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable – a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.
Brian Greene, American theoretical physicist
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Mudslides & Amtrak, Jay's VR fun

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, January 17th, 2018, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening folks!

S: How's everyone doing this week?

J: Good. Wonderful.

S: Much better. Pretty fair.

E: Yeah, Jay, you sound better.

C: I'm actually enjoying myself, guys.

J: What are you doing?

E: Oh, you're on vacation.

C: No, I'm not. I'm in Santa Barbara for my week-long session. You know, I'm working on my PhD, and because it's a nontraditional program for adults who have other jobs, a lot of the work that you do is remote. But every year you go to Santa Barbara for the week and get to see everybody in person and do a lot of really cool one-on-one training. And, of course, today I was eating lunch with my laptop, like that was my lunch date, on the patio at this hotel with this gorgeous view of the ocean. But I will tell you. I had to ride the train here instead of driving because so many roads are closed to get to Santa Barbara because of the Montecito mudslides. A drive which would have usually taken an hour and 45 minutes. The drive time was six hours.

S: Wow.

C: Yeah, because you had to go all the way around through the Angeles National Forest. So instead, I took Amtrak. thank the universe for Amtrak. Um, and they managed to clear the Amtrak tracks first, I think just because it's a good people mover, you know? Yeah. Really smart. So, um, I was able to do that, but yeah, there's a lot of people here who are really struggling. Um, it was rough, but I'm, I'm really thankful to be here and I'm learning lots of cool stuff.

S: Yeah. Those mudslides were bad, huh?

C: Really bad.

E: Is what you're trying to say. It gets pretty scary when the crust of the earth starts moving on under you and over you. I would say yes.

S: So we're not going to launch into a whole new discussion of it, but Jay got to experience VR in my office for the first time this week.

J: Yeah, well, I guess – That's hilarious. Steve handpicked my first real experience with the latest headset. I haven't experienced VR in two years. The very first thing is I got to be in a space shuttle and fly around the Aegis, which looks very similar to the original series Enterprise. It looks like a little more modern version of that. That was gorgeous. It was just an incredible opening to that bridge crew game where you get to look at the ship as if you're flying around it. And then he's like, all right, now for the test. pretty much, right? So you're standing on a city street and there's an elevator, oddly, the doors to an elevator are oddly on the street right there. So you click the button, you go in the elevator and he's like, hit the top floor. You start with the doors open and you are standing on the side of the building looking out of the elevator and there is like a hundreds of foot drop. You just look like you're way up in a tall building. And there's a plank, a pirate's plank. Bob mentioned this last week that you have to walk out on and then you're supposed to jump off of it. And I stood there and I couldn't leave the elevator.

C: And then – I mean

J: you didn't

E: want to leave the elevator.

J: about to lose respect for me. I took the headset off and I said, I can't do this. I said, I can't do this. I had a visceral experience. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. My brain said, absolutely do not go out. Do not go out there. It felt real. It emotionally felt real. That's the best way I could describe it. Like Steve and Bob did not fully sell the impact of how amazing VR is. I actually couldn't do it. We had dinner. I went back up. I tried it again. I couldn't do it again. I didn't take the headset off this time. I finally did it the third time, and it was painful because your brain is telling you you're in danger, massive danger.

B: Yeah. To be fair, you can't really sell that. You can't sell that verbally.

S: We tried, Jay.

B: Yeah, you've got to just experience it.

C: It's very hard. Yeah, I've done some of those VR experiences. things at vr conferences before where they kind of have people try to walk off a cliff into the ocean and it's very rare that people can just do it

E: makes sense because your brain is trained to not do those

C: and it also explains why vr works so well for um for therapy purposes especially with people with phobias and there's even posters like at the poster session right now At my school where people are doing research on that. It's really cool.

S: VR would be perfect for exposure therapy, right? They call that you expose people gradually to whatever they're afraid of and they build up a tolerance to it.

C: Yeah, you go up in the elevator.

B: They've been doing that for years.

C: Yeah, it's really cool. It's one of the best kind of most obvious uses within psychotherapy.

J: And then I tried all the things that Steve was talking about last week. I tried shooting the bow and arrow. Oh, God. There was a thing about – if you ever played the game Portal, Valve, the company that makes Portal, has a whole kind of like fun test lab type of deal. And out of the many fun experiences I had in there, I have to tell you this one thing that happened. So it was the wizard's temple, the wizard's tower room that Steve mentioned last week. Well, let me just explain to you what this was like very quickly. You walk in and you are in like movie set style. Like what would a wizard's research room be like? From weird creatures in cages to cool weapons on the wall to pages with magical writing on the table. At one point, this weird – you know oversized guy walks in and he's got a really big mouth and he's like talking to you and I'm just standing there going. this is a demo like. this isn't even a game and I'm utterly blown away like imagine when you you are interacting in a 3d environment with your friends standing next to you. you could hear them you could see their avatars of some you know like. if you like fantasy or whatever science fiction you know you pick the kind of. you know the game style that you like and you You could have like profound experiences with your friends. Like I am absolutely ready for this. I'm going to get a headset now even more than I wanted to last week. I am 100% sold on this. And as an education tool, again, it is going to be extraordinarily powerful in the classroom to let people feel an environment as if you're there, as if you're really there. It's really, really visceral, guys. It feels real. Even though you're looking at things that aren't real, it feels like they're in the room with you, like they're right in front of you. It's amazing.

S: Yeah. The interesting thing is that we're just seeing entry-level stuff right now.

B: This is Pong.

S: Or either demos or adapted things. But we have not really experienced anything close to the potential for this. We just have been given a taste. I can't wait until we have a kick-ass game built from the ground up optimized for VR. Yeah.

J: The other cool thing I loved is that Steve was able to – they have like a space where you could make it your office. So Steve set a room up and he had like pictures on the wall and he had the VR menu on the wall of the different games that he's purchased. It was just really cool right out of the gate, like this first real commercial version of VR. They already did something which I think is fantastic. You could create your own environment in there and kind of populate it the way that you want.

B: Books on the bookshelf. It was so obviously Steve when I saw that room. I was like, yep, this is Steve. Isn't that funny?

J: And it was a very palatial room. It was nice and big, really big. It was cool. Little things like that are going to make this be so meaningful to humanity. if you could create your own spaces in there.

C: Yeah, especially if you live in a tiny little shoebox apartment.

J: Yep, and I just think it – It could also be – this is a much bigger discussion, but it could also be abused very, very easily, guys. Wow. I mean it's transformative. You could really just want to spend your time in there. And I could clearly see how this could be emotionally addictive.

E: Yeah. What did they used to call Everworld? Evercrack? Everquest.

J: Evercrack. Yes.

E: So this will be that. Only a hundred times better.

S: Lose themselves in that game.

C: I had friends who I lost through Everquest.

E: Oh my gosh.

C: Yeah. I was right at that prime age for like, My friends were like teenage potheads who were playing EverQuest for like 12 hours a day. It was terrible.

S: All right, Bob, get us started with A Forgotten Superhero of Science.

J: Sure.

Forgotten Superheroes of Science (8:40)

• Sophie Wilson, English computer scientist

B: For this week's forgotten superhero of science, I'm going to talk about Sophie Wilson, born in 1957. She is a British computer scientist and software engineer who co-designed a specific type of computer chip and architecture that has been shipped in an amazing 30 billion products from smartphones to tablets to TVs. Amazing. Wilson studied computer science at the University of Cambridge in 1975. Her first summer off, she did what many kids do then. She developed an automated cow feeder. Sure.

J: Okay.

B: But what's really cool about that was that based on that work, She developed an early 8-bit microcomputer for hobbyists called Acorn System 1, which was sold by a British company called Acorn Computers. Now remember, that's 15 years before the World Wide Web. Home computers back then were just really starting after only a few years previously and they were mostly just kits. So these were like dedicated hobbyists, kids that are – or people that are savvy, computer-savvy today – would look at this and be like, damn, what do I got to do? Holy crap. I mean it was – you don't just plug it in and create a password. This thing required some work. So soon she started working at Acorn and her and her colleague Steve Ferber designed and implemented what would become BBC's microcomputer. In a decade, more than a million of them were sold including 80% of UK schools. So over here in the States where we are, we really didn't hear much about it in that time. But this was big. This is big in the UK. Now, ultimately, Wilson and Ferber co-designed a 32-bit RISC machine processor in 85, which is faster than any commercially available at that time. Now, RISC, you may have heard that term before. That acronym stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computing. This family of risk architectures that they came up with was so efficient, it was sold to other companies, which would then implement it in their products. And then it just took off. Today, Wilson and Ferber are responsible for more than, like I said, 30 billion products that use their risk architectures. An amazing legacy. So remember Sophie Wilson? Mention her to your friends, perhaps when discussing orthogonality, general purpose registers, or even ALUs. Who knows what they are?

E: ALUs. Oh, boy.

B: Arithmetic Logic Units.

J: Of course.

B: It sounds better, though, as ALUs.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

(laughs) (laughter) (applause) [inaudible]

Black Death (11:09)

• Maybe Rats Aren't to Blame for the Black Death

S: All right. Thanks, Bob. So, Cara, scientists are still studying the Black Death.

C: Yeah, it's really interesting, guys. I think that historically, people thought, and usually when you read about the plague, especially the Black Death, which is only a subcomponent of the plague, we usually think of the Black Death as synonymous with the plague. And yes, the plague, quote unquote, was the disease that people had during the Black Death. But there were medieval plagues spanning centuries, and there were massive wipeouts prior to the Black Death and again after the Black Death. So that's kind of interesting. The more you dig into the plague, it's got a dark history. A lot of people think, though, that the cause of the plague was mice. And that's because during modern outbreaks of the plague, and specifically in this case bubonic plague, which is caused by a very specific pathogen, it's a bacterium, and it is called Yersinia pestis. And in modern outbreaks, actually, there was one in China from 1855 to 1859. That was the first time that we were able to identify this bacillus bacterium, Yersinia pestis, and to sort of begin to understand it. And then we've been able to go back and look at bones of people, remains of people who died during the Black Death in the 1340s. And those also had Yersinia pestis in them. And the bacteria hasn't changed much over all of those centuries. It has not evolved very much at all. It's managed to, I guess, not face the types of pressures or the pressures haven't been there because it's so adaptable that it's similar. And it turns out that modern antibiotics would have actually worked back during the Black Plague, during the Black Death in the 1340s. Anyway, plague, there are a few pandemics throughout history. And the one specifically that a new study focused on was what they call the second pandemic. And the second pandemic is is the pandemic that occurred in the Middle Ages from about the 14th to the 19th centuries, and that included the Black Death. The Black Death is the one that we usually think of because it's the one that wiped out 25 million people. A lot of people think, and it's sort of just common folk wisdom, that the way people got it was that there were these rats and these rats carried the plague bacteria and then the fleas would bite the rats and then the fleas would get on people and that's how it would spread. But these researchers who just published this study in PNAS, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they did some really cool computer kind of renderings, some schematics where they tried to look at the modeling, the spread of the plague throughout Europe, the way that it actually happened based on records, based on body counts, based on things people wrote about. And what they found was that if it were really the rats that were going into the communities and biting a lot of people or going into communities and giving fleas to a lot of people and then moving on to another community, it wouldn't have spread the way that it did. And it's much more likely that bubonic plague actually spread via fleas and ticks that were living on people. So person-to-person transmission was much more likely than rat-to-person transmission. Now, I don't think that that means that rats couldn't have been the initial vectors. Rats continue to this day to be vectors of the plague. There are actually quite a few vectors that we see across the globe. Rats are quite a common one. Plague exists in modern times in the US, China, India, Africa, Vietnam, Mongolia. We've seen outbreaks in many of these places. And I think the reason that historically we thought that it was rats is because in modern plague outbreaks, when we look at them from an epidemiological standpoint, it does seem to be that rats are the primary vector. But back in the day, I mean, people were gross. Like we didn't use soap. We definitely didn't have antibiotics. We all lived on top of each other. Fleas and lice were rampant. And so these things seem to be like nom, nom, nom, nomming, and then jumping onto the next person. Bubonic plague, the one that we think of, is... actually named for its bubos. Yeah, these swollen, gross lymph nodes that people get in their groin, their armpits and their neck. And they get these bubos and they are painful. And so that's where the name bubonic plague came from. But there's other ways that plague can show up. There's septicemic plague, which is in the bloodstream. And there's pneumonic plague, which is in the lungs. That one's the most infectious type. Bubonic plague kills about half of the people it infects without treatment. But that's just bubonic. Without treatment, septicemic and pneumonic plague almost always kill. But with treatment, with modern antibiotics, there's a really good success rate, 85%. And that's including all the people that live in undeveloped countries where they may be waiting until way too late to get that kind of treatment. So it's quite survivable now, back in the day, not the same story. And ooh, you want to know what happens when you have plague other than bubos?

J: Uh-oh. Yeah. No, I just had the plague.

C: Yeah, right. Gangrene erupting, pus-filled glands. Your lungs literally start to dissolve. Here's the crazy thing.

S: I hate it when that happens.

C: Yeah, I know. Dissolving lung. It's like, what are your symptoms? My lungs are dissolving.

E: Get those clams out, though.

C: Yeah, right. Yersinia pestis is really virulent. And the reason is because it's an interesting mutant. So its original form was a soil bacterium. And when it evolved the ability to infect people and animals, it evolved some really cool tricks. It's not able to survive outside the body. It has to be in an organism, whether it's a person, the person's flea, the person's lice or rats, mice, prairie dogs. And then what happens is because it can't live outside the animal, it could die off too readily. So it evolved this way to kind of compensate for that. It disables your immune system. So it has these specific toxins that, that wipe out your macrophages. And so when your macrophages are wiped out, which are immune cells, the bacteria just multiply and multiply and multiply. So people are often, the actual cause of death from the plague is that they're literally poisoned to death by the bacterial load. There's so much bacteria. It gathers up under their skin in these big chunks, like these clots. And then the fleas and the lice are able to just get loads of bacteria by biting you and then sending it on to the next people. And check this out. In 2003, 2,100 people got the plague, 180 deaths, nearly all of them in Africa. In the DRC in 2006, 50 people died from the plague. That's modern. And then if you go way back in time, here's something that I had no idea. The Great Plague of London was from 1665 to 1666. One in five residents of London died then. Back in 541 ADE, 10,000 people a day died of the plague in Constantinople, which we know now is Istanbul. So they say that that wiped out kind of the root there. A lot of people in the 1700s, half of Europe's population was wiped out by the plague. And then, of course, we know about the Black Death, which killed 25 million people. Like this is sort of the great equalizer, isn't it? Oh, And sorry, I found the reservoirs. Mice, camels, chipmunks, prairie dogs, rabbits, and squirrels, and again, rats. But the funny thing is, if you read about the plague, up until this new study was released, they almost all kind of just pass along that same folk wisdom. Rats caused the plague. Rats always caused the plague. People got it from the rats. People died. But now we're questioning if that's actually the case.

S: Yeah, but there was a news item a couple of years ago that we reported on where there was a study saying maybe it wasn't the rats. Maybe it was the other rodents, like chipmunks and squirrels and stuff. But they didn't really make a compelling case. But apparently there's a lot of controversy in plague science.

C: Yes, it's a hot debate topic. And the reason that they're probably seeking out alternative explanations is because it's never sat well with epidemiologists, historical epidemiologists, or forensic epidemiologists, or rats, because it just didn't add up. It didn't seem to be happening solely in places where the rat populations were high. And in modern cases of plague and some other historical cases of plague where we can tie it to the rats, There's this die-off event where just before all the people started dropping dead, there were these massive piles of rat carcasses. And there doesn't seem to be any evidence in the historical literature of rat die-offs during the Black Death. And that's why people were like, gosh, it just doesn't seem like it was the rats. But up until now, they haven't really been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation. But based on their computer modeling, they're thinking fleas and lice, man. Gross.

S: Definitely the insects, just we don't know who they were coming from.

C: Yep, yep, yep. That sort of bottlenecked the – I mean they didn't bottleneck the population but they reduced the population and then it kind of re-exploded. Think about what the US population – no, what the global population would be right now if we didn't have any plague events.

S: Yeah, although it's hard to say because, I mean, history would have been so different.

C: Absolutely. Yeah, so many things might have changed.

S: They might have had more wars or there might have been other things.

C: Massive butterfly effect.

S: Yeah, right.

B: We could be traveling to Alpha Centauri.

C: We could be, Bob.

E: Maybe, but maybe not.

J: You mean right now, Bob? Sure.

B: Damn. Yeah. So centuries of – well, you know, sublight.

S: Arguably, Bob, scientific advance was faster after the Black Death because before that, labor was cheap. And so we just threw labor at every problem. After the Black Death, labor was in short supply and so people had to invent items, machinery to do the work. And so it actually spawned a lot of advance.

C: And medical advance too.

B: You could say more people means more wars and you know how awesome wars are for advancing tech.

S: Again, we just don't know how it would all shake out.

B: You could make it many different scenarios. All you could say is things would be very different right now.

J: Kind of like the Mirror Mirror universe.

C: Yeah. Maybe that's it.

B: Maybe they just didn't have the Black Death and that's why the Terran Federation has taken over the galaxy.

C: So guys, if you're interested in reading this article, you can find it online in full text. It's called Human Ectoparasites and the Spread of Plague in Europe During the Second Pandemic. So these ectoparasites, of course, are things like body lice and fleas. Pretty interesting.

Britt Hermes Lawsuit (22:58)

• Britt Hermes Legal Costs Fundraising Campaign

S: So you guys are aware of what's happening with Brit Hermes, right, who we had on the show? Yeah. Absolutely.

B: She's going to have a baby.

J: We know how she feels on a personal level.

C: I know. This is a slap suit, isn't it?

S: Absolutely. So just to remind you, Britt Hermes is a former naturopath who saw the light, realized that her profession was basically a sham, and she writes the Naturopathic Diaries where she talks about some science-based criticisms of naturopathy and naturopaths and their practice. And she is being sued by naturopath Colleen Huber for defamation and it's – in my opinion, this is blatantly a slap suit, which is a strategic lawsuit against public participation. It's meant to intimidate or threaten somebody into silence and she basically said, yeah, take down your blog post or we're going to sue you.

J: Where have I heard that before?

S: Yeah, where have you heard that before? She's not going to do that. She's going to defend herself and defend her right because if she caves to that, then she's done, right? I mean then every naturopath will tell her to take down all of her posts. But of course, even defending yourself from a frivolous slap suit is going to cost a lot of money.

C: So … Well, and let's not forget that Britt lives in Germany and she's being sued in Germany where the First Amendment, first of all, doesn't exist. They have their own protections, but apparently their protections are not nearly as strict as ours. So this might be a more uphill battle for her.

J: Sure.

E: Yes.

S: Right.

C: Precedents there aren't great.

S: Yeah. So I wrote about Colleen Huber on science-based medicine when this happened. This was actually months ago because I think she needed a little bit of attention. I said, well, who is this person and what is she actually claiming?

E: I hope you were careful.

S: Not at all. Basically, you say it like it is, right? So she is a cancer quack. That's the bottom line. She tells patients that chemotherapy will weaken you and strengthen the cancer. So she tries to scare people away from effective standard treatment. And she treats you with intravenous vitamin C, which doesn't work, and intravenous baking soda. Oh, gosh.

J: Oh, that one works. What?

E: Baking soda?

C: That's so dangerous. Oh, my gosh.

S: It's based on the idea that – This is Hulda Clark territory. Yeah. Cancer is like an acidic environment.

E: Vitamin deficiency or something, right.

C: And if you – No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, but we have buffers in our blood for a reason.

S: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So whatever. Also like that sugar feeds the cancer. So you got to reduce the sugar. So she's doing this thing where she's taking basic science concepts that are like, oh, let's see. Let's explore this aspect of how cancer works. And then she's just making clinical claims, jumping 10 steps forward and making completely unsubstantiated clinical claims. When I looked at the research, is there anything published to support any of these things that she's doing? And the bottom line is the quick answer is no. These are not supported by adequate clinical evidence. So she is recommending IV treatments that are not proven to be effective for cancer. She's claiming a 90% effectiveness that if you follow her program, most people go into a remission, 90% success rate. So that is a huge red flag for cancer. quackery, making those kinds of dramatic claims that And of course, recommending treatment, that's not the standard of care. Why isn't it the standard of care? You have to believe that every other physician is either stupid or evil, right? That's always – they don't want to really cure you, conspiracy nonsense. So anyway, Britt was perfectly justified in calling out Huber for her quackery and for her good work. She's getting souped. So as we have done in the past, the skeptical community is standing together to defend people who are in this situation. And actually Iran from the Australian skeptics and the Australian skeptics as a group have initiated a fundraiser to raise the initial money that Brit will need to defend herself from this suit. I mentioned this briefly on the show last week and there has been a great response from everybody mentioning this. She's already raised I think around $40,000, which is a little bit more than half of what she needs really just to get through the first phase. As we know, she might need ten times that to really see this through the end. Gosh. And I don't know like how expensive these suits typically are in Germany. So who knows? I mean, as you say, Cara, it's a different world there. So it could be a lot worse. I don't think it's as bad as the UK, which is, I think, the most expensive place to defend yourself against a libel case.

C: When Brit was posting about it or when the Australian skeptics were posting about it because they've been really helping to organize her fundraising drive, I saw a lot of chatter on social media about people saying that there were recent kind of not great precedents that have been set in Germany. And maybe some of our German listeners can clarify, but that there have been individuals who have successfully pulled off really overt slap suits recently. And so that's like kind of doesn't bode well, which is why we just need to fight even harder. Yeah.

S: So we'll have the link to the URL. It's kind of long, but it's skeptics.com.au. slash features slash Brit Hermes legal costs fundraising campaign.

C: But there are dashes in between all those words.

S: So we'll have the link in our notes. If you search on that, you'll find it. Just use your Google Foo to find it. And we'll post it on our Facebook page as well. And so we also, in the process of doing this, because actually over the last year, I've probably been contacted by two or three other people who are like, hey, I got a cease and desist letter because of my blog or my podcast or whatever where I'm criticizing a quack. And I basically have no choice but to take it down because I don't have any way to even initiate a defense against it. So what I think that we should do is create a – basically a legal defense fund. Rather than doing a case-by-case, just have a war chest, a legal defense – anti-quackery. We'll give it a better name, like an anti-quackery legal defense fund. that will always be there. We obviously could have a committee of science-based medicine experts who can maintain it, who could manage it. So that if some anonymous skeptic who wrote a perfectly reasonable blog and then somebody is threatening to sue them to shut it down, we will already have the funds available to defend them. And I've already spoken to my attorney about it. I think it's a fantastic idea. That's basically what you do in situations like this. You create a legal defense fund so that you can arm yourself against slap suits or this kind of legal intimidation. So the – Hermes Legal Defense Fund will probably morph into that eventually. But we obviously have to take care of her first because she's being sued at the moment.

C: Yeah, and they did say if they raise more funds – they're trying to raise something like $85,000 for the time being, which probably won't be enough. But they did say if they raise a bunch more, they're going to roll it over.

S: To this fund, yeah.

C: Yeah, exactly.

S: To the Legal Defense Fund, yeah.

C: So hopefully we can – we've already started. I want to say we just got an email from Iran today. I think he sent out a big blast to people on their mailing list that we're getting close. And we're recording this on Wednesday night. So as of Wednesday night, 58,000 of the 80,000 that they were hoping for. And that's in four days. 1,400 donors, you guys. That's so great. But it's still not enough. It's still not enough.

J: It's a great start.

C: But gosh, U.S., Canada, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. It warms my heart.

S: Actually, I just got an email from Iran saying they're over 58K as of right now. This information will be obsolete by the time the show goes up.

C: Oh, and guys, there's a shortened URL here. It's just www.skeptics.com.au. forward slash Brit Hermes.

S: Okay, great.

E: Perfect.

S: That's B-R-I-T-T-H-E-R-M-E-S.

C: Much better.

B: Please note these are the thoughts of Stephen Novella and not necessarily shared by the Rogues, HDU Productions, or Bob's dog, Molly.

S: I talked to Molly and she's totally on board with this, Bob.

E: Oh, yeah. Two paws up. Yeah.

S: And our case is winding down. I mean hopefully. I mean there's still a couple of possible appeals that he could do. But when it's – the last thing is finally, finally over. There's no more appeals. There's nothing possible. We'll give what the final tally is. But it is looking like he's going to be paying a huge chunk of my legal costs. And that will be a good cautionary tale for anyone who wants to come after us as well. Listen, if you want to threaten skeptics with slap suits for expressing their opinion and opinions are protected in the United States. You cannot sue somebody for an opinion. This is what's going to happen. We're going to fight it. We're going to defend ourselves and you're going to end up paying a boatload of money. And you're going to get a lot of negative Barbra Streisand effect probably to boot as well.

B: In our opinion. Yeah.

S: So it's not a good strategy. It's just not a good strategy.

RW: Yeah.

J: A.K.A. come at me, bro.

E: A.K.A. let's do this.

Fake News Follow Up (32:34)

• Study: 42 percent of Republicans believe accurate — but negative — stories qualify as "fake news"

S: All right. Evan, there's a couple of interesting recent studies and surveys looking at people's attitudes towards facts and fake news.

B: My attitude.

E: Yeah, I saw this one the other day as well, and maybe you have too. The folks at Gallup Knight Foundation have published the results of a survey titled American Views, Trust, Media, and Democracy. And for disclosure, the survey was funded by several foundations, including the John and James Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. and George Soros' Open Society Foundation. Now, here are some key paragraphs from the introduction of the report. Technological advances have made it easier for Americans to connect with each other and to find information, including details about the major issues facing the country. But those advances present both challenges and opportunities for individuals and U.S. institutions. Results of this 2017 survey show that most Americans believe it is now harder to be well-informed and to determine which news is accurate. They increasingly perceive the media as biased and struggle to identify objective news sources. They believe the media continue to have a critical role in our democracy, but are not very positive about how the media are fulfilling that role. And the research was based on a national mail survey of more than 19,000 U.S. adults aged 18 and older. Now, one of the items from the survey that generated a few headlines had focused on the term fake news. The Washington Post's headline reads, And here it is right from the study. The participants were asked, among many things, to rate, and I'm quoting, accurate news stories casting a politician or political group in a negative light. 26% of Democrats said this was always true. 42% of Republicans say that this was always true. In fact, 10% of Republicans say it's never true. I actually have a question about the wording of this particular statement. I don't know if you guys had some thoughts on it or had a chance to read it. Let me read it again. The statement that they asked the participants was, accurate news stories casting a politician or political group in a negative light. And they asked that as opposed to, for example, your politician or political group, right? They say a politician or political group. So the statement reads as nonpartisan, but am I misinterpreting that?

C: No, the statement itself is nonpartisan. It's saying that people's interpretations of the statement have a partisan influence. But it's hilarious because the first word is accurate.

E: Right.

S: I think that was the thing that they were going for. If people are reporting accurate news but it's disparaging of a political party, is that fake news? Right. And the 42 percent of Republicans said, yeah, that's fake news.

E: Right. Yeah. So basically dismiss it because it is negative.

C: But also let's be clear. You said 20. some odd percent of Democrats say the same thing.

E: They did. Yes, they did. Which is bad. That is bad.

S: You have to point out this isn't a scientific survey because it was a mail-in survey, right?

E: No.

S: There's a self-selection bias potential there, which is always hard to know exactly how that plays out.

E: But about the term fake news. Yeah. They devoted a section of this survey to the term fake news. So what do Democrats think it means versus what Republicans think it means? They found that Democrats, they are more closely define it to the original definition of the phrase referring to fabricated news stories that are intended to deceive. Right. Makes sense. That's how I see it as well. And I'm not a Democrat. Republicans, on the other hand, they're more likely to broaden the meaning, which includes what President Donald Trump has ascribed to the term, which he often uses when describing news stories he dislikes, regardless of whether or not they're factual. So that's a significant problem. This is a real breakdown. It's part of the slow erosion of our political discourse, I think. Language is important, and there are rules to language, and that's important. And look, I make language mistakes on a regular basis. I try not to repeat them. I try to correct myself. But an important rule, I think, of language is not to sort of hastily change the definitions of the words. Some words will naturally evolve over time and some will actually die out. But when words become co-opted or misused and abused beyond recognition, that's a big, big problem. Like what Deepak Chopra did to the word quantum, that poisoned the minds of millions of people who have now no idea what quantum is.

S: I agree. We talk about this a lot on the show because it drives us nuts when people use words to confuse and obfuscate rather than to explain and enlighten. And in politics, it always takes on an Orwellian kind of feel to it. It's like changing the meaning of words to control how people think. And this shows that that's actually what's happening. Yeah. You know, they've destroyed any kind of real useful definition for what it means to be fake news. The term was originally coined to mean news. that's entirely fabricated. You know, it was literally completely fake in order to make money, you know, to drive clicks or whatever. It's not the real news. It's actually fake news. It makes no attempt at being real. And Trump turns it into news I don't like. Yeah.

C: Yeah, news I don't agree with, news that paints me in a negative light.

S: And that's actually changed people's understanding of it, which in this case I think erodes any kind of respect, understanding of facts and truth.

B: And now despots across the globe are using that term in order to beat down the media press.

E: Absolutely. Yeah.

S: Yeah.

E: And it's not just anyone. Look, when it comes from the most politically powerful person on the planet or the most politically powerful position, I should say, because there's other presidents have been accused of doing this as well with certain terms. This is a problem that should not be underestimated. It has obvious concrete effects on what is happening with the discourse politically.

J: What can be done about it?

E: Well, what can be done?

S: Start a skeptical podcast. Evan, I also sent you this other Rand Corporation report that just came out actually yesterday as we're recording this. Yes. Talking about truth decay, which is a funny sort of term that I think we've used before.

E: Yeah, we've used that term. I've seen it in skeptical circles for a while now.

S: Yeah, truth decay. But they're saying this is a real historical phenomenon. This isn't the only time this has happened in American history. that Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they did say that looking at this phenomenon of lack of respect for facts and truth, that there's a lot about the current episode that is actually worse than even these prior historical episodes. That there is something real going on here. There is a historic lack of respect for just facts as facts, you know. It makes it really hard to have a conversation and we've all experienced this personally. You can't have a reasonable conversation with somebody when you can't even agree on basic facts because there's no source. There's no common source that we can agree upon.

E: Right, and how are you supposed to govern effectively if you don't have facts and evidence to base a lot of your decisions on? To wrap up, Steve, Jay, you had asked, what can we do about it? That is obviously the $64,000 question. I don't know that there's any one solution. We have to be vigilant as ever, consult multiple sources when it comes to news items, do your own homework as best as you can. It takes extra effort, yes, but you have to do it. And here's a website that might be able to help you. MediaBiasFactCheck.com. This is a very good website. What it does is it helps the reader figure out the most extreme sides, both politically left and politically right, sources of information, which ones really lean hard to the extremes, and also it tells you which ones aren't. are the most neutral. Included in the most neutral, they did include Center for Inquiry, right in the neutral, which was interesting. They also have some other categories here, not just for politics, but they have a pro-science category. And in there is, oh, let's see. Oh, science-based medicine. And oh, wait, what's this? The New England Skeptical Society. I've heard of them as well. That's awesome. Yeah, it's really great.

S: Always nice to get a mention.

E: It's very, very good. And there are hundreds. They list hundreds of sources and outlets there. So I think it's a very good resource that people might want to use as a starting ground when they're looking up certain things.

S: Yeah, cool. All right, Jay, get us up to date on Who's That Noisy?

Who's That Noisy? (43:23)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Garbage can rolling over packed snow

J: So last week, I played This Noisy. And by God, a lot of people didn't like it. So you might not like this noisy, but you don't have to like them all. This one is very annoying to listen to. But here it is. So I will say this. I have been doing Who's That Noisy for a long time now. I've had a lot of experiences with it. I don't think I got more emails than I did with this one.

S: Oh, really? Complaints, huh?

J: Because I think it had such a white noise aspect to it where it could be so many different things. I got incredibly weird and very different emails. you know, suggestions and ideas about what this is and everything. So let me, you know, I did pick some of my favorites here and I'm just going to go through this, but you know, there's so many more than, than what I'm representing here, guys. So I, I considered the, uh, those people that, um, said it was a zip line. I thought that was probably the worst guess. Although I have to say, I've never heard a zip line. So maybe there is a zip liney noise in there, but someone, um, named B-Dog, who will represent all of you who picked Zipline, said, it's a Zipline. My neighbors have one in their yard for the kids. I hear it every day. Okay, well, maybe I don't know what it sounds like, but I don't know.

S: It doesn't go zip?

J: Yeah. No.

C: Well, it does kind of go zip, actually. I've been on Ziplines a lot. They do not sound like that. Ziplines do kind of go zip. Do they? Maybe once people have it in their backyards, they're different. I don't know.

J: Now, this next person, I would... I have given them the win because they heard exactly what I heard. And if you guys remember last week, for some reason I ended up telling you after the show what the noisy was and we joked about it a little bit. And then I said to you guys, listen to it again, but listen to it with this. And this is exactly – Jeff Hughes, a listener, wrote in and said exactly what I told – the crew of what I thought I heard. And he said, Hey Jay, don't really know what the noise he was this week, but to me it sounded like someone opening a creaky door and then approximately 65,793 bats flying out and screeching. I can only assume because they don't like whoever is scraping their nails on a chalkboard. So that's my guess. So crazy, right? Jeff, you and I heard the same exact thing. And I told this to everyone. I'm so like, So happy that someone heard that because I'm like, wow, I'm really tripping here. I hear a creaky door and I hear bats screaming. Thank you, Jeff. We share a mind. Everyone else can go screw themselves. There were other guesses. Patrick Carr sent in a guess and Patrick said, hey, Jay. Glad you're feeling better. The noise this week has a noticeable spin up and spin down, so I think it's a tool. A bit of a guess, but I'll say it's a high-speed saw cutting through dry ice. I like this one. He also says live long and prosper, which you will always get. Star Trek points with me if you say that. Metal on ice, not a bad guess. Not a bad guess. But of course, somebody guessed it. And this is amazing. And to Rob, who sent this in, thinking that someone fully guessed what it is is very impressive. And here's what Benjamin R. Spiller wrote in. He said, and this is for the win. He said, this week's Who's That? Noisy sounds like the noise that my trash can makes when rolling it out on the curb over extremely cold, packed snow. And ironically, tomorrow is trash day. It's the sound that will curl my toes tomorrow morning. So Ben said it all. A lot of people wrote in saying things to me like, oh, my God, Jay, what the F? Why did you make me hear that? And could you pick a more annoysing noisy? I don't think I could. I like how you said annoysing.

C: Oh, that's a great new word.

S: That's annoysing. What do you call that when you combine two words into a new word?

C: Oh, we talked about that.

J: Wait, did I just make up a word too? Port Montu.

C: Yeah, it's a Port Montu. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

E: Never been there.

S: That's annoysing.

J: Oh, my God. I'm co-opting that. That's my word. I made it up.

E: Chillax, everyone. Okay.

J: All right. So Rob from last week, Rob sent it in, and Rob said, Jay, this morning when I tipped my trash container onto its large plastic wheels and began to roll it down towards the street for pickup, I heard a noise coming from it that I had never heard in 10 years of doing this. So, of course, I had to stop and record it for you. And then he said, note that my trash container was unusually heavy, maybe double its usual weight because he had vacation and they missed picking it up. And there was a thin layer of crusty snow but not quite ice covering the black top of my driveway. Steve has absolutely said I cannot play it again. So anyone that wants to hear it again, you have to rewind because Steve refused. He said, I will delete it if you try to play it twice during. Who's That Noisy. So that was a great one. I loved that one even though it was a horrible sound. And to a lot of people, this was like fingers on a chalkboard type of sound. It was very provocative. So there you have it. Thank you, Rob. This was a great week. All right. This week's Noisy was sent in by a listener named Kirk Mona. Take a listen to this. What is that?

S: What is it? I just had a plan for the apes flashback.

J: Something crazy is going on. So listen, if you think you know what it is or you heard something really awesome this week, email me at WTN at theskepticsguide.org.

New Noisy (48:32)

[guttural, throaty animal grunts]

J: what it is or you heard something...

Interview with Richard Wiseman (49:11)

• Richard's website

_text_about_skip this abridged version

S: All right. Thanks, Jay. Hey, we have a really fun interview coming up with Richard Wiseman. And as is often the case, we have a much longer uncut version available as premium content. So if you want to listen to the whole interview and you have access to premium content, you might want to skip this abridged version. And of course, if you want to get access to premium content, then you need to become a premium member of the SGU. So let's go on with that interview. We are here now at SciCon 2017 with Richard Wiseman.

J: I'm keeping that in, Richard.

S: Richard, how are you doing, man?

RW: I've got severe flatulence.

C: Good noise you make. That's not what I would go for. That's not juvenile at all.

RW: I'm over-egging the pudding quite literally.

E: Severe is the correct...

RW: Severe? Yes. Before we started recording, you were talking about your wife's love of flatulence.

S: You're talking about Jay's wife.

RW: Jay's wife. I'm so sorry. It's all right. I'm trying to pin it on your wife. Sorry. Jay's wife.

S: She thinks it's very humorous.

RW: It's extremely funny. It is.

S: There's something objectively funny about farting. There's no question.

C: It's true.

RW: Now, I'll tell you what happened. When I was six years old, I was at school, and I was sitting there and minding my own business, and upside down, massive head of Santa Claus appeared. Appeared. Appeared. What does that mean? Looming over me. Oh. So Santa Claus had arrived at school. And he sort of like decided the best thing to do was grab me and sort of go over me. And so this big looming face appeared. And so I actually shit myself.

B: Oh. Santa made you shit.

E: He made you hit the brown note.

RW: So it's like, ho, ho, ho, ho.

C: The way he knew? Oh, God, the whole school knew.

RW: I don't know if you ever shit yourself on your six. It stinks. It absolutely stinks. And so I went to the toilets. And I tried to wash my underwear, but not very successfully, my trousers. And I came back. I just stank. I was like, shit. And so my association with Santa Claus is very, very negative.

S: Yeah, yeah. And stuck with you.

RW: Oh, yes.

S: The shit, I mean.

RW: Yes. And he surprised me, in part because it was July. So I decided to start off on that heartwarming story.

S: That's really sad. Touches my cockles, yeah.

RW: Boo! You're going to regret that, I'll tell you.

C: Did you not have a teacher to help you through?

RW: We had several.

C: Did they just left you to go take care of yourself?

J: They didn't send you home?

RW: No, well, it was old school because I wasn't allowed to go home because the other animals...

C: But didn't they have the extra pants for the kids who pooped their pants?

RW: No, that's an American thing. In Britain, we don't have that.

S: British kids don't shit themselves.

RW: Well, you do shit yourself, but you have to go wash it, and then you have to wear the pants. But the amount that shit stinks. There must be an evolutionary reason for that.

S: Yeah, because it's bad for you, and they want you to be repulsed by it.

C: But it's interesting that there's a changeover.

E: Don't eat it.

RW: Don't eat it, right.

C: So I don't have babies, but all of you have babies. And I have friends who have babies. And there's a changeover when they start to eat solid food. Like, it's not that gross at the beginning. No, it isn't.

S: No, that's correct.

C: And then it gets vile.

S: Yeah.

RW: But does your own baby's shit, is that repulsive as well? Oh, yeah. Okay, there's no point. You go, oh, it's my shit. That's different to another baby's shit.

C: But it's like breast milk and formula poo. It's very different than poo-poo.

E: Right.

RW: Oh, that's interesting. Right.

E: Yeah.

RW: So, anyway, that happened to me when I was six. That was one big thing. That's horrible. And then the other big thing that happened to me recently was… fast forward to today. so about a week ago I was coming across here and I thought I haven't got a shirt. so I went out in edinburgh and there's a shirt shop and it was 40 pounds for a shirt. this shirt I'm wearing now no shirt thank you. and so I said to the man 40 pounds. he said what do you want it for? I said I'm going across to speak at a conference. he said you know what's going to happen. you're going to pour coffee down that shirt. you need two shirts.

E: it's true 80 pounds.

RW: So I thought, I think he's right. I said, I can't come here with just one shirt. So I bought two shirts for £80. He said, if you're buying two shirts, we've got a deal. It's three shirts for £90.

C: That's a great deal.

RW: It's a great deal. So of course, at that point, you're trapped. So I went, I'll have three shirts for £90. He said, if you're buying three shirts for £90, for £100, you can have four shirts.

B: at some point.

RW: Well, that's the thing. So I walked out spending £100 on four identical shirts.

E: It's not a bad price.

RW: No, it's not a bad price. It's not a bad price. But I was thinking, how far does that go down? You could be there. I was thinking, do I have an offer for the entire shop? Uh, So I've got four identical shirts like this for £25 each.

B: Identical?

RW: Absolutely identical. And I thought, my goodness, there's psychology in action.

S: He upheld you big time.

RW: Oh, massively.

E: But he did a great job. Right, it's the right approach that he used.

RW: Unbelievable. Did you spill coffee on it yet? I haven't, but I'm going to try that just because I can.

C: I packed one pair of jeans. Did not pack. I'm wearing one pair of jeans. Did not pack any jeans because I wanted to be light for the weekend because LA to Vegas is only an hour. And in the Uber on the way to the airport, I spilled my entire bottle of apple juice all over my head.

E: Oh, my gosh.

C: Is that what I'm smelling? You can't see it, but I can feel it.

E: I can still feel it. It's going to be like sticky.

C: So I might have to go and buy a pair of jeans here in Vegas.

RW: Well, if you do, be very careful because if you get that same guy, you're at $100.

S: You'll go home with four pairs.

E: Right.

RW: So those are my two big bits of news as a kid. Santa Claus. And recently I spent £100 on four shows.

E: I think we got everything we need.

S: Is there anything new in the world of psychology that you've discovered recently? This is a very generic question, but have you come across any studies recently where you're like, oh, okay, this changes the way I think about this aspect of psychology? Wow, you study psychology.

E: Here we go.

S: Yes. No. No.

J: Yes.

RW: Yes. Rob Jenkins, my very, very good friend from University of York. Rob's a lovely, lovely man. Very creative. So there's an illusion, which you may have been. If you've seen the Venture Magic show, you may have seen it. It's a spiral. And you look at the spiral. And then when you look at someone's head, there's an afterimage effect. And their head seems to get bigger.

S: The balloon. Yeah. I've seen that illusion. It's very effective. It's great.

RW: It's on the web, I'm sure. Here's what Rob did. He showed people an eye chart and got them to read down the eye chart until they said, I can't see that row. Then he showed them the spiral. They look back at the eye chart. It looks bigger. They can read stuff they could not see first time round. That is amazing. That is absolutely true. It's a publishable. He's out there. He's published it. It came out probably about a month ago.

E: So neurologically, what's going on?

S: I don't know. That's interesting. So, I mean, it's actually... What the... That information, it's like it's enhancing that information on the post-processing visual association.

RW: So he thinks it's like a pattern filling, that it actually is kind of giving you more of a visual field. And it's interpolating.

S: That's right.

RW: That's right. But isn't that a phenomenal idea? So he published it, I think, about a month ago.

B: So we have a zoom lens.

S: Essentially. But it's digital zoom. It's not optical zoom. Yes. We have a digital zoom in our brains.

E: Okay. Well, I'll take it.

B: That's awesome.

S: So there we go. Isn't that a great study? That is a great study. There we are. That's awesome. I never would have guessed that.

RW: Yeah. So there's a search for that.

B: If we could permanently induce that state where everything seems to be getting bigger, we could read things.

E: There might be some side effects, you know, on a long-term basis, though, you know.

RW: So no, look up that paper. I can't remember the title, but Rob Jenkins.

C: So Richard, when you were in school, did you study experimental psychology?

RW: Oh yeah, I've always been an experimental psychologist. I'm an experimental social psychologist. This is the thing. So what I'm interested in is people and the way they interact. I'm not a neuropsychologist at all. I know nothing about the brain. But I'm just interested in the work that conversations do, for example. So when you tell somebody about yourself, what do you leave out? What do you put in? That's the sort of thing that I find very interesting.

S: That's why you didn't like our explanation of the foot fetish before because we went neuroscientific, not social psychological. That's correct. You want the social psychological explanation.

RW: That's right, which is the correct one.

E: Your countenance changed.

RW: It really did. That's right. There's this big brain emphasis in psychology, which is disastrous for psychology because it's reductionism gone mad. You kind of think telling people that they are their brains is terrible because it feels very fixed. Yeah. Where social psychology is about change. And so yet is the most important word. I was on the train the other day and there was a. I couldn't see her, but it was a female tennis player in the behind me. And she, I think, was a semi pro. And obviously she chatted to the guard and she's getting off the train. The guard said, so are you famous? And she gave the best reply ever from a social psychological perspective. She said, not yet.

C: Oh, interesting.

RW: And there's your social psychology. Right there. Not no, not yet. And that's all about social psychology. She thinks she will be. She has hope for the future.

S: So I always say, if you have to ask, then no.

C: What do you say when people ask you?

S: I say that. I say, well, you have to ask, then obviously no.

C: A guy on the plane today asked me that because he was asking what I do. And I was telling him, well, he was like, so you're famous, huh? And I was, I never know what to say because I'm not famous.

E: But I was like, I'm really, really, I'm nerd famous.

C: Like there's a very narrow amount of people. Because Will Wheaton walked on the plane at the same time and said, hey, Karen. I was like, hey, Will. And then he didn't know who Will Wheaton was either. And I was like, you're not our audience.

RW: But that tells you, she's not consciously thinking that. That tells you where her mindset is at. Her mindset is, I will be in the future.

S: Yes.

RW: And that's classic social psychology.

E: Plus, when you're walking on an airplane in Los Angeles, chances are higher than average, I would say, that probably you're going to run across somebody who's in the entertainment industry.

C: Oh, in L.A., yeah, definitely. Famous quote. Actually, at dinner last night, I went out to dinner and Stevie Wonder was at the restaurant.

E: See that? Wow.

B: You know what I say? Somebody asked me, I say D-level fame. D-fame.

RW: But that's still fixity, you see. That's fixity from a social psychological perspective.

E: Right, right.

RW: So that's what I am.

B: I have aspirations to see.

RW: Well, that's right, but that's not imbued in the answer, so that's why it's interesting.

C: I don't want to be famous. I would never answer like that, because to me that's a bit of a narcissistic answer. But I guess it's different if you're...

RW: an athlete that's.

C: I think that's slightly different because then they're looking to go up exactly yes but for somebody who is like in a public consciousness for their ideas or whatever I feel like being like one day I'll be famous.

RW: yes maybe but still it's it's. it's the work it does in the sense of it tells you where that person's at.

C: yeah yeah absolutely and so.

RW: so for school teachers you have kids say I'm not very good at maths. it's so different saying I'm not very good at maths yet yet yeah and yet tells you everything you need to know about that kid. Absolutely.

B: Right, right.

RW: So that's what I find interesting.

S: So I'm interested, and we've sort of touched on this before, probably more in private than on the show, but the way you don't like neuroscience reductionism. Yes. Which I understand, and I agree with your criticism of pop culture likes to do the hyper-reduction, what I would call hyper-reductionist. There's an appropriate level of reductionism. Hyper-reductionism means you ignore hierarchically higher levels of emergent behavior or whatever. So you cannot understand human behavior by studying the brain. You have to study human behavior. Yes. Right. So, because there's higher level things. But I don't think, I wouldn't ignore the role of the brain, though. I'd like to see how they all interact. Yeah.

RW: Yeah, but you've only got limited resources and brain stuff is expensive. And so the only thing that I think is interesting in the entire world of psychology and possibly the entire world in its entirety is change. Change is the only thing that makes anyone interesting and any play interesting or any talk interesting is change. And the problem with understanding someone's brain is it normally doesn't tell you anything about how they can change. So if we want to get kids to be better at school, understanding their brain versus maybe how long the lesson should be or where you get to follow their passion or any of those sorts of things, to me, change matters.

E: But what about a natural change process like age, how the brain changes with age?

RW: Then how does it help you be a better human by knowing that information? How does it stop?

C: Because then you can focus on the things that are more plastic as opposed to focusing on the things that are more critical.

S: Because the brain itself can change.

RW: The brain itself changes every moment of the day.

C: So if there are no areas where plasticity is going to be more impactful, you can actually focus on those areas.

RW: But most brain people don't. I agree with that. So if they go, okay, fine, so you want to get people to be more active in their old age or whatever, they go, well, no, I'm just interested in the brain. It has a fixity to it.

C: And I guess it just kind of depends on the application, right? When we talk about psychology, are we talking about experimental, are we talking about social, are we talking about clinical? I just went back to school. It was my first semester in a clinical psych PhD program. And it's funny because I hear echoes of the kind of anti-reductionist sentiment a lot in my professors, and they use the word medical model. And it denigrates it. Oh, that's the medical model. Yes. And the CBT people love the medical model, and the psychoanalysis people hate the medical model. And it's really interesting to see how siloed actual psychological practice is.

RW: Well, it really makes a difference. So if you view somebody as their brain, well, how are you going to change them? Well, you can physically put some drugs in there, or you can start cutting their brain around, and both of those have got a pretty… terrible history. if you see people as social beings where you start to change them from talking type therapies and then what do you say to them? well if you're a freudian you talk about their childhood or whatever.

C: cbt it's a lot of kind of using like classical conditioning and operant conditioning and yes it's all behavioral but then that changes the brain. yeah.

RW: So I think it does matter. I think it's very important. Change is very important. And so when I give talks, they are about how to change primarily, not the talks I'm giving here, but talks to normal audiences, not how you stay the same.

C: This is just weird.

RW: Lost course. It's all about getting people to have a more flexible mindset and see themselves in a flexible way. I think it's really important.

S: I will totally agree with you on that score. And I argue for that a lot, too. I don't like the focus on talent that we have in the United States because... Saying that someone is talented or a natural means that they didn't have to work for it so hard or that's just the way they naturally are. It actually denigrates them.

B: But couldn't you look at it this way, though, where they are so talented that they worked as hard as anyone else, but using that same level of exertion, they've reached heights.

S: other people have never been able to focus on their work.

C: They usually worked way harder. That's the thing that we're forgetting.

S: They just worked harder. They worked harder.

C: And it actually denigrates them to say, oh, you're such a natural talent. They're like, F you. I work my ass off every day at this.

S: And even, like, saying, like, oh, that person's really smart. It's like, well, maybe they studied a lot and they put a lot of effort and, you know, they leveled up their intelligence.

C: And they did have probably a social environment that, you know, was, like, lacking a lot of stereotype threat. And, you know, like, they had people around them to promote that kind of focused effort.

E: The environment matters.

B: Here's an idea that just occurred to me. You're denigrating hyper-reductionism in a way. But what about this idea? The idea that you could... hyper reductionism can be massively useful because using hyper reductionism you could use that knowledge that you've learned to actually imagine simulating a brain in a computer in such a way that you can then track what kind of change is possible in ways that you could never do to real people. but you've got a model in a brain is really complicated sure absolutely.

RW: and so you go yes that's fine it'll take a lot more than 100 years. you go that's fine. but if we want to make changes to kids tomorrow actually we know the psychology involved it's and it's really cost effective. So I just think, why don't we just go with that?

S: Why don't we just study actual people?

RW: Why don't we study actual people and how you get them to be better people or achieve their goals or whatever? We know that stuff. We don't need to know what's happening in their brain. That does not help us. one little jot.

C: There's this weird leap of faith that a lot of people have that once we can become that reductionistic somehow, that will clarify all the questions we have about how brain becomes mind. You know, how consciousness emerges.

S: It's like thinking. once we map the genome, we'll understand all genetic diseases. Yeah. We didn't, and we don't. No, you have to understand it at all levels.

C: I always pronounce it wrong, so I'm going to try again. Gestalt. Gestalt.

B: A fully realized brain simulation would be immensely valuable in so many ways.

S: Yeah, but you're talking about an end stage of basically reproducing a human brain in silicon. I mean, we're doing it. People are working on it. Then we'll be doing research on other brains, just the ones in silicon. Okay.

B: I know, but if the simulation is constructed in such a way, it can be incredibly illuminating on psychology and behavior and change.

C: I think it won't be as illuminating.

RW: I don't think you'll ever get it. Of course it's complicated. It would be like saying, could we model the whole of New York the way everyone goes about their business of a week? You can, but it's incredibly complicated. Sure, of course.

C: Think about the physicists who are doing that. They're modeling the universe, right, at like the femtometer level. They're tiny, tiny portions of the universe. And so, yes, it's illuminating, but is it going to answer all of our questions?

B: Not all of them.

S: It depends on what your question is. It can't be answered in any other way. So definitely for social psychological questions, you have to study people, right? Obviously, I'm a neurologist. Like if my question is Parkinson's disease, that's a brain disease. You have to study the brain.

RW: That's a different thing because that clearly has its roots in a neurological disorder and drugs may or may not. You can imagine drugs that impact both.

C: And clinical psychology, I think, needs to have a well-rounded understanding of both because there are people that respond and require drug therapy. And there are people for whom talk therapy works. Or cognitive behavioral therapy. All these different therapies work. And a lot of times you'll see that efficacy of these different approaches depend on the pathology involved.

B: Right. And I like imagining the tools that we're going to have, I think we'll clearly eventually have at some point, and how it can impact both your professions. Right. It's fascinating to think what we can see at some point in the future. Don't know when, but I think we'll see it at some point.

S: Be cool. Right. But for now, you're right. I think the media loves the hyper-reductionism. They like to talk about the brain.

RW: And museums love it.

S: Yeah.

RW: I mean, I won't say which one, but there was a museum that had a huge brain exhibition on. And they phoned me up and said, we've got these brain things, we've got these brain experts, we understand everything about the human brain. The problem is no one's coming to our exhibition. You're a social psychologist. What kind of marketing can we do to get them? I said, no. You're the brain expert.

S: You seem to know all about the brain. You know how to get people to come to that.

RW: That's right. You know nothing about it. So you phone the person who's not in your exhibition because it's all about brains. And that's what I mean. when push comes to shove, when it comes to something that really matters as practical, then it's normally the psychologists that get the phone call. And because the brain people go, it's really complicated for non-medical people.

S: Yeah, for psychological questions, you have to have a psychological answer.

E: It's the right tool to use.

S: But again, there is then the overlap, too, like depression, anxiety is partly a biological, partly a psychological, social.

C: I do think that reductionism to the neurological level has some utility in that it helps erase stigma around mental illness. Because I think that historical viewings of mental illness as being disorders of will are really dangerous psychologically.

S: You can't confuse the different types of questions. There are neurological questions, there are psychological questions, there are neuropsychological questions.

C: And it's empowering for somebody to think, okay, so something is happening in my brain, and once we can really attack this through behavioral intervention and drug intervention, maybe my brain will start to reorganize in a healthier way. That is a much more meaningful and empowering thought than I'm not thinking positively enough.

S: But it is tricky. It is tricky because people will take that the wrong way and go, I don't have a problem. It's my brain. No, don't do that because you are your brain.

C: My dad has been diagnosed with depression for decades and he's never seen a therapist. He just takes meds. That's all he does for it. He thinks that's all he needs to do.

E: These are these cultural barriers that we need to be able to knock down that are still in place.

S: It's complicated, but yeah. The hyper-reductionism is a problem, I agree with you. The context is everything.

RW: When you hang around social psychologists who are into change, the language they use is so different. Because that's what my normal language is. How are you today? It's the most common thing social psychology says. How are you today? Because it's right now. You're not going to be like that tomorrow. It's not a long-term state. And so I was talking to a friend of mine. I said, I'm working on this other project. And I said, God, it's terrible. I said, guys, it's an absolute nightmare. And their first instant reaction was, and when's that going to change, do you think? Yeah. So suddenly you've got hope. Suddenly I said, oh, it's only another week.

S: Yeah.

RW: And that's different to a fixed set of, oh, that's terrible.

E: I've gotten into the habit when I speak to my clients on the phone, Instead of just saying, how are you, just the very general, I say, how are things today? How are things going today? It's a subtle change, but I find it to be important. It makes it so that it's not just this throwaway phrase. I really would like for them to tell me why they're calling me today or whatever it is that they're going to talk about. I find it a little easier on them.

B: Yeah, they may think about the answer instead of just saying by reflex, I'm fine, you know.

S: Right, it's a vague question. How are you?

RW: You won't be like that tomorrow. It's now. It's living in the present.

E: So I've gotten in that habit.

RW: That's right.

E: It's become a habit for me now.

RW: Yes, interesting. The other great word, nothing to do with what we're talking about, the other great word is the willing word. Do you know this research on the word willing? Oh, it's brilliant. So you can up by about a third the chances of somebody doing something if you use willing. Would you be willing to?

S: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

E: oh my god right it's really good thinking about that.

C: yeah when I remember when I was a kid and used to always say can you? and like people would always correct you and say change it to wood or shall or yeah like can like. well of course you can but I'm that's not what I'm asking you.

E: yeah I remember always being like.

C: I hate adults like they would constantly correct that. Yeah, that always bugged me. But that's interesting.

S: That's interesting, the willing. Oh, willing's great. So there's really a lot of crossover.

RW: Would you be willing to give me 20 bucks? No. But it's a great tip. I mean, in emails or whatever, yeah, would you be willing to massively?

C: There's a lot of crossover there with social psychology and economics, aren't there? Like a lot of interplay between those fields.

RW: Yes, and also we forget that language represents our thoughts, and it's unthinking in that sense. We just use words without thinking, but listen to the words people use, and it tells you so much about what's going through their heads at that moment without them realising.

S: Yeah, I agree. As a professional, as a physician, we think all the time about the words that we use to communicate with our patients. Sometimes subtle choices in words can have huge impact on the perception and the interaction. You have to be very, very careful.

RW: On hope, on making them think they're dying. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about? versus is there something else? So you get a lot better high response rate on. is there something else. Is there something else you want to talk about, not. is there anything else you want to talk about.

C: Is that more dismissive? That's correct.

RW: Because one sounds almost slightly dismissive. It's just a general thing. But there's something else.

S: Is there anything else? I'm in a hurry.

RW: Is there something else you want to talk about? I sort of know what it is. So again, there's studies on that.

S: So basically you study how to manipulate people.

RW: Well, for the good of us all, particularly when it comes to book sales.

S: That's what you want us to believe.

C: For the good of us all, according to Richard Weissman.

E: Yes, I'm willing to believe that.

RW: We've covered so much psychology there. My God. We did. Yes.

E: We started with some very earthy topics.

RW: Yeah. There we go.

E: Anything else you want to talk?

RW: Nothing.

S: Is there something else you'd like to talk about?

RW: Would you be willing to say that? Yes.

S: Would you be willing to talk with us even further? Yeah. Richard, it's always a pleasure. You are one of our favorite people in the Skeptical Movement, partly because you're just hilarious. Top five.

E: That could be the reason.

J: Top five, okay.

S: And we love the British dry humor. Oh, my gosh.

RW: It's always a, you know, thank you.

E: See that?

S: All right, take care. Good.

RW: Nice speaking to you.

S: Bye.

Science or Fiction (1:13:55)

Item #1: A new paper presents preliminary evidence using fungal spores in concrete mix to make the concrete self-healing – the spores will become activated by cracks and secret calcium to fill them. Item #2: A recent comprehensive study finds that the phases of the moon are statistically significantly associated with the risk of a magnitude 3 or greater earthquake. Item #3: Engineers present the first atom-thick memory storage chip they are dubbing an "atomristor."

Answer	Item
Fiction	Moon phases & earthquakes
Science	Self-healing concrete
Science	Atom-thick storage chip

Host	Result
Steve	swept

Rogue	Guess
Cara	Moon phases & earthquakes
Bob	Moon phases & earthquakes
Jay	Moon phases & earthquakes
Evan	Moon phases & earthquakes

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. One is fake news. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one they think is the fake.

E: And that's the fake news to us because we disagree with it. Right. Yes. Yes.

S: Yes. Right. Sure it is. Okay. Three regular news items this week. Are you ready?

E: Yes.

S: All right. Item number one. A new paper presents preliminary evidence using fungal spores in concrete mix to make the concrete self-healing. The spores will become activated by cracks and secrete calcium to fill them. Item number two, a recent comprehensive study finds that the phases of the moon are statistically significantly associated with the risk of a magnitude three or greater earthquake. And item number four, engineers present the first atom-thick memory storage chip. they are dubbing an atom-rister. Cara, go first.

Cara's Response

C: All right. New paper presents preliminary evidence using fungal spores and concrete mix. Concrete self-healing. So I'm assuming they don't, you know, just because they're fungal spores doesn't mean they're bad. But will they grow into like mushrooms? Will the concrete be all mushroomy? That would be a bad idea. But no, there's lots of kinds of fungus. Kind of cool. I hope that's true science. I kind of want to go with that being science. A recent comprehensive study finds the phases of the moon, phases of the moon, so like waxing, gibbous, we need to get all that, are statistically significantly associated with the risk of a magnitude three or greater earthquake. So that would have to have something to do with like the pull, like the tidal. I don't like that one. I so suck at like moons. Anytime you have something like the moon or tides, I always get it wrong. Because I'm like, how would that work? But, oh, that would probably totally work. No, but how would that work? Let's see. Engineers present the first atom-thick memory storage chip. I like that one. It's an atom-thick. Okay, whatever. But I've seen things where, like, things are written on, you know, in DNA, which is smaller. Well, no, how many? It's not smaller than an atom. It's smaller than a cell. Um, I have seen the boy and his Adam, which was a really cool IBM movie where they use like individual, I think they were hydrogen atoms and they were able to like animate them by, by moving them around and doing like an electron micrograph, like movie, like stop animation movie. And so, and then I've seen, I don't know. I just feel like they're improving and improving tiny storage. So although maybe you guys are going to be like, Carrie, you're being ridiculous. And Adam is way too small. Like it's gotta be the size of a whatever molecule. Um, At least this one seems like it's on the right track. So I'm going to go with the moon thing because it sounds like something like a hippie fortune teller would say.

S: Okay, Bob.

Bob's Response

B: Spore and concrete mix sounds pretty cool. My gut reaction is that you need a lot of spores to really – to help. And then of course more spores means less real concrete. But very cool idea. I assume the spores would just hang out there for years and decades without much degradation. I suppose spores are – that's kind of what spores do. All right. So that's kind of viable. Let's see. Let's go to three. Atom thick memory storage chip. Atom rister. Yeah, it's clearly based off of mem rister. But yeah, atom thick memory storage. Yeah, I mean it's not necessarily encoding memory on an atom, but it's just the key element of the chip is one atom thick. So it doesn't – it could be multiple atoms thick. But still, yeah, I mean, I can't really doubt stuff like this. It's just the advances are just coming so fast. This could be in the lab and be great, but of course, won't really easily transfer to commercial products. But who knows? So the second one's giving me trouble. Yeah, I mean the faces of the moon. I mean the tidal forces are powerful, of course. People think about tides and water, but there's also tides not only of water but the atmosphere and the land. I mean it's measurable. The land could actually rise up by something like a centimeter. It's measurable. So that's really cool. But I mean earthquakes, I mean they're not surface phenomenon. They're more – epicenters are generally well below the earth and I just don't think the moon is going to have that much of an impact that it could increase the chance of magnitude three or more. Yeah, that sounds a little unlikely to me. So I'm going to say that the earthquake is fiction as well.

S: Okay, Jay. Okay.

Jay's Response

J: Steve, did you know that's 72% of the time when Bob and I select the same one? This could be one of those times because I'm agreeing with Bob on pretty much everything that he said. The fungal spores and concrete mix, I think it's a brilliant concept. It does sound cromulent. I can understand that the fungus could secrete something that could actually help fill in the cracks. And maybe they have to genetically engineer them to do things exactly the way they need to. But that's fantastic. And I really hope that that's legit. And then jumping to the last one about the Atom Thick Memory Storage, the Atom Restorer. That's a weird name. Anyway, yeah. I agree with Bob. Again, it wouldn't surprise me that some lab is working on this. I don't know how ready for market that is, but it sounds like, yeah, I could see that happening. The whole idea about the moon, though, having anything to do with magnitude 3 or greater earthquakes, to me, just seems ridiculous, and that's definitely the fiction.

C: Jay, can't you say you agree with Cara too?

J: Come on. Well, 72% of the time, Cara. I'm sorry.

E: All right. All right. So 2017, that statistic.

S: All right. And Evan.

Evan's Response

E: Yeah, I think I'm going to join the gang. Phases of the moon. No, not the phases of the moon. Maybe the moon itself does have something. Certainly not to magnitude three or greater. No.

S: Fiction. You're not going to go for the solo win this time.

E: Not this week. Not feeling it. Not feeling it.

J: He's not a sucker, huh?

Steve Explains Item #1

S: All right. We'll take them in order. A new paper presents preliminary evidence using fungal spores and concrete mix to make the concrete self-healing. The spores will become activated by cracks and secrete calcium to fill them. You guys all think that one is science, and that one is science. Yeah, it's kind of a neat little idea. It's a preliminary paper, so they show that it's feasible, but they haven't fully developed it yet. The idea is because a lot of our infrastructure is crumbling because as some concrete ages, it develops little cracks, and little cracks develop into bigger cracks, and bigger cracks actually can erode the structure of the concrete and cause it to crumble and collapse. So that's a huge problem. It really shortens the lifespan of the concrete. And they're not the first ones to work on self-healing concrete because that would be a huge advance in terms of infrastructure lasting longer and being safer, et cetera, and cost-effective, all that stuff. So, yeah, they mixed in these fungal spores into the concrete mix. And the idea is that when a crack develops, water will seep into the crack and it will be exposed to air. So you'll have water and oxygen. And when that's there, the spores will germinate and grow and they will secrete calcium carbonate to heal the cracks. And then when the crack fills in, they'll have no more water and oxygen and they'll go back into their dormant spore state. Voila. Self-healing concrete. Smart. That's awesome. Yeah. So this hasn't been fully developed yet. This may not pan out. Who knows? Again, I said it was preliminary, but that's the idea and they presented their initial sort of exploratory evidence for it.

E: But nothing solid.

S: Yeah. This will be one we'll have to come back and look at in 10 years, right?

C: Evan. Evan.

E: Thanks, Cara.

J: At least he's trying.

S: I tried to ignore him, Cara. I can't help it.

C: It's funny. Thank you for the encouragement.

E: I will do more.

Steve Explains Item #2

S: Let's go on to number two. A recent comprehensive study finds that the phases of the moon are statistically significantly associated with the risk of a magnitude three or greater earthquake. You all think this one is malarkey. Yes. And this one is the fiction. All right. Good job, guys. I included this one. I figured you guys were going to get this one. But I included this one because remember we spoke about Ken Ring from Auckland, New Zealand? Remember that guy? He's the guy who claims that he can predict earthquakes based on the lunar cycle. And we all thought that he was full of it because he doesn't really have any evidence to back up his claims. And so there was a comprehensive study looking at earthquakes and they found absolutely zero effect from the phases of the moon. There was no effect in this data at all. The author said this was – what patterns were there were random and are just as consistent with completely random data. There was nothing statistically significant.

J: So – There you have it, folks.

S: Yeah. The phases of the moon. Yeah. Well, this has been a folklore for a long time because people think the moon affects everything, right? So it was worth doing a thorough analysis and yeah, nothing. So there is no moon. There is no lunar phase effect on earthquakes.

E: The shining of the light of the sun on the moon has an effect. What? No.

S: It would have to be the position. It would have to be the tidal effects. And it's not saying necessarily a full moon. It's just the phases of the moon. So the only plausibility there, if you had to give it any physical plausibility … was that when the moon and the sun line up on either side of the Earth, then their tidal effects line up. So there's a sun tide as well, and the sun tide is about half as strong as the moon tide. They either cancel each other out or they add to each other. So when they're adding to each other, you get a bigger tidal effect. And so there could be a plausible effect there. And as Bob said, it does affect the land as well, even though it's a tiny amount. But apparently it's not enough to affect earthquakes, which makes sense.

Steve Explains Item #3

S: Okay, all of this means that engineers present the first atom-thick memory storage chip. they are dubbing the AtomRister is science, and this is totally cool. This is an ultra-thin memory, so you could have multiple layers of this to build up really, really small, powerful….

RW: High storage, yeah.

S: Yeah, storage devices. But they're also – they are memristors, right? So they are transistors and memory storage at the same time, which is why they're atomristors because they're also atom-thick memristors basically. And they would be much more efficient in terms of their energy usage and they could be faster. And so there's lots of other potential advantages here. These were developed by engineers at the University of Texas at Austin in collaboration with Peking University scientists. And this is the thinnest resistors ever created. And they are made out of graphene, as you might expect, right? Graphene. I knew it. Doped with molybdenum sulfide. In an active layer, the entire memory cell is a sandwich about 1.5 nanometers thick, which means you could densely pack them in a layer or a plane. So think cell phone battery, right, guys? Or cell phone – I should say not cell phone battery, cell phone chips or cell phone memory. So this could be just cell phones with terabyte storage or whatever. Who knows? But they say this kind of advance will keep Moore's Law going. We'll get a few more years out of it. So – Hey, Bob.

E: Yo. Here comes the Yottabyte. The Yottabyte.

S: Can't wait for the Yottabyte, baby.

J: Finally, right, Bob? We've been waiting a long time for that.

E: We've been talking about it for 12 years.

B: Yeah, we've got a little ways to go, but yeah, it's going to be cool.

C: My new iPhone's a 256-gig iPhone.

S: Nice. That's nice. Oh, boy.

E: That's cool. And thank you, Steve.

C: Crazy. Yes, thank you, Steve.

S: Yeah, good job, everyone. So, Evan, give us a quote.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:26:17)

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable – a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.

– Brian Greene, American theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist

E: Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a matter that's precise, predictive, and reliable. A transformation for those lucky enough to experience it. That is empowering and emotional. Brian Green.

S: Brian Green, awesome. Yes.

E: Cara, were you with Brian Green recently? Yes.

C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I moderated a panel with him and Michio Kaku and Sylvester Gates. I love Brian. I think he's awesome. Yeah, he's awesome.

S: You did?

B: When did you do that?

C: Earlier, like kind of middle of last year towards the end. There's an episode of Talk Nerdy. They let me record it or they recorded it for me and gave me the file and asked me to do a Talk Nerdy with it, which is amazing.

B: So tell me about Michio. I mean, does he still come out with his little snappy little quotes that are just really misleading and annoying at times?

C: They actually, it was funny. I mean, principle of charity, but when we were doing that thing, everything that he said was either legitimate yet poetic, or it was kind of tongue in cheek. Like he was intentionally being provocative, but not in a way that I think, yeah, like he would say things about like very Einsteinian in that way about like God not playing dice and things like that. But you knew what he meant by it. All right. Well, that's encouraging. I was actually pleasantly surprised. That's encouraging. And granted, he was there with his colleagues. It was three string theorists who all have different viewpoints about string theory but are similarly interested in the topic. So they played really nicely off of each other because they all had very different – approaches to public speaking.

S: So guys, next week, actually, but when the show comes out and the following week, I will be in Hawaii. Hawaii. Oh, wow. Yeah. So a friend of mine from medical school is getting married in Honolulu. That's cool. Yeah. So it's actually at the Disney Resort in Oahu, wherever that is. Yeah, it should be fun. Although I had to get an entire white suit for the dinner, whatever. Yeah.

C: That's very Hawaiian, isn't it, to have everybody in white?

S: Yeah, right, all white. Thanks for that. Yeah, it should be fun. I'm really looking forward to it. I don't know if there are any skeptics in Hawaii, but drop me a line. I don't know if my time is going to be pretty much spoken for, but who knows? I might be able to grab lunch or something.

E: Aloha.

B: Hey guys, check this out. I'm going to be at Logical LA February 9th to 11th. Next month, I'm so excited. Two days of enlightening and inspiring speakers and three nights of skeptical entertainment. Cara, I will be there. Cara might be there with a decent probability. George Robb is going to emcee, so you know it's going to be awesome. Lots of other great speakers. Definitely check it out if you're nearby. Plenty of seating, plenty of tickets available. Come on down. Renaissance Los Angeles Airport Hotel.

S: Sounds like fun. All right, guys. Well, thanks for joining me this week.

J: Thank you, Steve.

E: Thank you, Steve.

C: Thanks, Doc.

Signoff/Announcements (1:28:00)

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

S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at theskepticsguide.org, where you will find the show notes as well as links to our blogs, videos, online forum, and other content. You can send us feedback or questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. Also, please consider supporting the SGU by visiting the store page on our website, where you will find merchandise, premium content, and subscription information. Our listeners are what make SGU possible.

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