SGU Episode 540

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SGU Episode 540
November 14th 2015
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 539                      SGU 541
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
SS: Simon Singh
Quote of the Week
We ignore public understanding of science at our peril
Eugenie Clark
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction

• Star Wars Prequels, and Jupiter Ascending

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, November 11^th, 2015, 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: So have you guys seen all of the Star Wars movies because we're going to be reviewing them in a couple weeks.

C: You know I haven't.

J: Almost. Almost.

S: I just rewatched all of them.

B: They're going to be like almost brand new to me because the first three travesties, I think I really haven't even seen them since in the movie theater.

C: I haven't seen them at all.

B: Oh, boy.

C: It's going to be brand new to me and I'm going to cry in the fetal position.

E: Oh, my gosh. That's a lot of information you have to digest.

S: But we won't prejudice you. Just watch them cold.

E: No, no, no.

C: Yeah, because I will watch them, but Evan, you're right. When we discuss them, I'm going to be like, I have no idea what's going on. I'm going to have to find some sort of wiki page.

J: Just call me. I'll tell you.

C: It's called Wookieepedia.

J: Steve. Out of the first three, what was the best one?

E: Wait, wait. When you say the first three.

S: You mean one, two, and three. Or four, five, and six.

J: Yes. One, two, and three. Oh, my God.

E: Well, okay.

C: They don't mean chronologically. They mean in the story.

J: We always refer to them as movies four, five, and six, and one, two, and three.

E: Do we now?

J: Yes.

E: I must have missed that memo. Okay.

B: Yeah. But the first three are ambiguous.

J: Evan, bend over. [blaster sounds]

C: Ouch.

S: I'd say I can't choose. They all have some redeeming qualities, but also are horrible in their own way.

C: You guys, this is not making me want to sit down for six hours of my life.

J: It's called being loyal to a brand, Cara. You have to do it.

B: Speaking of space operas, I even hesitate to even bring this up, but I finally saw Jupiter Ascending. I remember seeing the preview. It looked kind of cool. I heard horrific reviews. Never saw it. Finally saw it. I was so pleasantly surprised. It wasn't a travesty. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but the thing I enjoyed the most was how creative the sci-fi technology that they used throughout. It was just so well thought out and planned. The spaceships were very creative and different. Even the computer consoles. They had a two-second little snippet of somebody using a computer console in a way I have never seen anybody use in a science fiction movie. Just so many things. Even the gravity boots were kind of cool, even though manipulating gravity is silly, but even that was kind of an interesting thing. We're probably going to get a ton of email on this because every review I read was a said that it was a travesty, and I'm just not seeing it. I'm not seeing it.

C: It's a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes.

B: Yeah, it's horrible.

E: Just keep the same low expectations for the new Star Wars movie and you will be fine, Bob.

S: All right. Let's get on with the show.

What's the Word (3:02)

• Formication

S: We're gonna mix things up a little bit this week. We're gonna actually gonna start with a What's the Word.

C: What's the Word this week you guys? You ready for it? You have to listen really, really carefully.

E: Okay.

C: Formication.

E: Hold the phone, now!

J: Hey!!

E: I wasn't listening carefully.

C: One more time! I'm gonna say it really clearly: Formmmication.

B: So F-O-R-M-I or A.

C: M-I.

B: Yeah.

S: If that happens on the west coast, is that Califormication?

(Rogues laugh)

B: Oh, god! Nice!

C: Yeah, right? This is one of those fun science words that sound super dirty, even though it's not. Although it is kind of dirty, but not in a sexual way. (Laughs)

S: It is just one letter off, yeah.

C: It's one letter off! What do you guys think it means?

S: I know what it means.

B: Something about...

C: Steve always knows what it means!

S: Well they're medical terms! You keep picking medical...

C: I know, I keep picking medical terms 'cause they're so good.

J: Break it down.

B: Something about a dirt.

J: What's “form,” Bob? Formi...

C: Ooh, you're so cold.

S: Yeah.

(Laughter)

C: You're not getting any warmer.

B: That's not helpin'.

C: All right. So I will give you – no, I won't give you the etymology first. I'll just go ahead and define it. It is a tactile hallucination, or parasthesia-

B: Whoa!

C: -specifically refers to the feeling that something (most often insects) are crawling all over, or under your skin.

E: Oh, the heebie-jeebies.

B: But what about this?

C: Yeah.

B: Cara, what about this? What about that buzzing you feel that you are convinced is your phone vibrating, and your phone isn't even on you. (Cara laughs) Is that formication?

S: No.

C: That's not-

B: Why?

C: -actually formication.

B: Okay.

C: This is very specifically a tactile hallucination of the feeling of creepy crawlies; very specifically has an insect-type feeling, and it is often a symptom of disorder of the spinal cord or peripheral nerves, or even more commonly, a side-effect of cocaine or amphetamine use. And you can also see it associated sometimes with psychiatric disorders.

S: Or alcohol withdrawl.

C: Or alcohol withdrawl! Yeah, so formication first appeared in the literature in 1707. We then later saw it in the 1797 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, And they were describing the conditions – Steve, help me out with the pronunciation of this – R-A-P-H-A-N-I-A – poisoning by ingestion of seeds of the wild raddish raphish.

S: Yes, or course. Raphania. (Pronounced the way it looks)

C: There we go. All right. So, in the 1797 edition of Encylopedia Brittanica, they're describing raphania, and they say that it includes a symptom, quote, “A formication or sensation of ants or other small insects creeping on the parts.” And then they fully defined it as its own entry in 1890 in the same encyclopedia, saying that it's a quote, “Variety of itching, often encountered in the exema of elderly people. It is described as exactly like the crawling of myriads of animals over the skin.” So, where does this come from?

S: Formisidae.

C: Formisidae! Which is the family name in taxonomy of the ant!

B: Whoa!

S: And what do ants inject in you when they bite you?

E: Venom.

C: I don't know.

S: Formic acid.

(Cara shrieks)

B: Ah! Nice!

C: Yeah, so it's the feeling specifically of ants crawling over your skin, which of course, you may not particularly be able to point to it being ants, but it feels like a lot.

E: Remember that Star Trek episode when Scotty stuck his hand into the situation with the screw driver, and he said, (Scottish accent) “Ah! Ants crawling all over me arm, it feels like.”

S: Yeah. Yeah yeah.

C: Yeah, he could have said, “Oh my gosh! I'm suffering from formication.”

E: Why didn't he?

S: Right.

C: Because then people would have misheard it.

E: Ah, Roddenberry would have.

S: When Paul Atreides put his hand in the pain box.

B: Yeah!

S: Yeah.

E: Ooh! (Laughs)

C: Have you guys ever had this experience?

(Chorus of uh's)

J: How did I know that it was real or not, though? What if I thought it was real?

C: Uh, then I'd be worried.

E: Formication.

C: Yup.

S: Formication, yep. Yeah, that's cool.

C: Yep.

S: I've always loved that word, formication.

C: I love words – there're a lot of cool science words that sound totally dirty, but aren't. I may do a series on those.

News Items

Low Calorie Sweeteners (6:48)

• https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/low-energy-sweeteners-and-weight-control/

S: Alright, so we have some interesting news items this week. We're gonna start with one about low-calorie sweetners. You know, like, aspartame, sucralose--

E: Stevia?

S: Stevia... I hate stevia.

E: That stuff'll kill ya. (laughter)

S: So there was a recent, systematic review of pretty much all of the studies looking at any information about using so-called low-energy sweeteners, or LES, and changes in total energy intake or in weight and body mass. Very interesting because this has been controversial over many years and it's a good, sort of, review of the different kinds of scientific evidence and how we use them. So, here's the question: if you drink diet soda sweetened with aspartame or sucralose, versus drinking sugar-sweetened drinks, versus drinking, let's say, water, what's the net effect on your calorie intake and your weight? Right, now the common-sense, sort of knee-jerk response is, "Well, if you're replacing 3- or 400 calories of sugar-sweetened drinks per day with zero-calorie drinks, you should be skipping out on 3- or 400 calories." You know, it seems pretty obvious. But, of course, life is always more complicated than that. Because the body is complicated and there's all kinds of feedback mechanisms and unintended consequences. It turns out that the answer may be far more complicated. For example, psychologically, people may think, "Oh, I'm having a diet soda; I can afford to have that cheesecake." (laughter) You know, it's called compensation.

E: To rationalize it.

S: Yeah, you compensate by increasing your caloric intake elsewhere because you feel like you've earned it, because you're--

C: It's like how, at Starbuck's, I get non-fat milk so I can add whip! (laughter)

S: So, compensation definitely exists; the question is how much? Is it enough to offset the reduction in the sugar that you're missing out on? There are some biological mechanisms as well. For example, the GI tract has sweet receptors. What are they doing? Does that affect your appetite?

J: Why does that have sweet receptors?

S: Well, because the GI system detects things like what you eat and affects your behavior. It send signals--hormonal signals--to your brain. It's also--there's this idea of learning: that you're tricking the brain by giving it something sweet that doesn't have calories that your brain then begins to disassociate the sensation of sweetness with caloric intake. And that can result in you craving more calories overall.

E: Right.

S: Right? Does that make sense?

E: Yeah.

S: That's the question and it may not be as obvious as it at first seems. So there have been several kinds of studies looking at this question, and you've probably seen headlines over the last 10 years: "Diet sodas make you obese," or whatever. Everytime one of these studies comes out, the press presents it as if this is the final, definitive word on whether or not low-energy sweeteners are good or bad for you.

C: And, also, sometimes they're funded by, like, "THE AMERICAN BEVERAGE ASSOCIATION." (laughter) I've seen that happen a couple times recently and you're like, "I don't know about that."

J: (affected) "Isn't it delicious?" (laughter)

S: There are animal studies. Animal studies have the advantage of we can control everything that they do and everything that they consume. These are mostly done in rats. You can either feed them--you can sweeten their water with either sugar or low-energy sweeteners, or you can force the pills down their throat, and then you give them food that is sweetened, like, it's a little bit of sweetener in it. And what these studies generally find is that, if you force-feed rats a lot of low-energy sweeteners, they may actually over-consume lightly sweetened food. So that's--most of the headlines that you see, and it says, "Low-energy sweeteners make you obese," probably most of them were rat studies. A couple of problems with these studies: one is that, rats aren't people and the laborotory situations that they're putting the rats in are very contrived. There may be lots of reasons why the rats will consume more feed that have nothing to do with human behavior. That data may be suggestive but it really isn't definitive in terms of its application to people. The next type of study is observational. So you're not randomizing people to eating low-energy sweetener or not, you're just seeing what they're doing and what their weight is. Or you might do cohort studies where you follow them going forward. And those generally show conflicting results.

C: It seems like there would be so many confabulating factors there.

S: Yeah, that's the weakness of observational studies--is that they're confabulating. And the authors of this new review argued that you can't make cause-and-effect claims because it's quite possible that people who are overweight choose to drink diet drinks because they're trying to lose weight. You know, they're not overweight because they're drinking the soda; they're drinking the soda because they're overweight. So, yeah, the confounding factors make it impossible, really, to make any kind of cause-and-effect conclusion from those studies. So now we get to the most clinically relevant types of studies, where you do experiments on people and you randomize them, and you might even blind them to whether or not they're drinking sugar-sweetened or low-energy-sweetener-sweetened beverages, and then follow their behavior. And those studies find, in this systematic review, that drinking low-energy sweetener results in a decrease in caloric intake and weight.

C: Oh, wow!

S: So those studies are broken down into short- and long-term. Short term studies are basically one meal. You give people--you pre-load them with either sugar, or water or aspartame, and then you let them eat as much of a meal as they want and you see how much they eat.

C: So that's just caloric intake. You can't look at weight after one meal, right?

S: Yeah, that's just energy intake, exactly.

C: Okay.

S: And they find that there is compensation; that people do eat more if they drank the low-energy sweetened beverage, but not enough to make up for the decrease in the sugar calories. And so there still is a net decrease in caloric intake. And they said any effects of having had the low-energy sweetener probably wouldn't last much beyond that next meal, anyway, so this data is helpful. But there are also long-term studies. Long-term studies last anywhere from days to three years. The longest studies last up to three years. Looking at people, again randomized, and perhaps even blinded to whether or not they were drinking sugar-sweetened, low-energy-sweetener sweetened, and then also compared to just drinking water. And they found, long-term, again, there was an overall decrease in energy intake and an overall decrease in weight with the low-energy sweetener--even when compared to water, which is what I found most surprising in this data.

C: Oh, wow!

S: Because there's no calorie difference between the two; between water--zero-calorie water and zero-calorie diet soda. But still there was a little bit of an advantage to the sweetened zero-calorie beverage. But there was a clear advantage over drinking sugar. Which, again, one of those situations where the science confirms your initial assessment, the sort of common-sense assessment that says, "Yeah, not drinking 500 calories of sugar a day is a good thing for your energy intake and your overall weight. So, whatever compensatory mechanisms are in there, whether they're psychological or biological, they're not offsetting the reduction in calories by avoiding the sugar. It's still a good idea, to not drink sugary drinks if you're trying to manage your weight.

B: Of course.

C: But what if when you get--when you're accidentally served a Diet coke, as opposed to a regular Coke at a restaurant, it tastes like you've been poisoned!

S: So you just don't like the flavor of it.

E: ...or the surprise.

C: I cannot handle it. It's disgusting. It's so gross. I don't know, I think it's one of those things where it's like an acquired taste, and I've not--

S: It is, it's an acquired taste, in my experience, and I've had many other people make this observation to me. I think there are just differences in people's tastes, so that could be just genetic for you. But many people have the experience that, at first, they don't like it, it doesn't taste sweet enough, or something, there's just something not right about it. And then, after a while, they can't stand going back to sugar-sweetened drinks because they taste so syrupy and heavy and thick, and they prefer the diet drinks.

C: Yeah.

S: That was my personal experience. I can't stand sugar-sweetened drinks now. I only drink the calorie-free ones. And other people have made the same observation to me. So I think, yeah, the taste thing is personal and also acquired. And also, before we begin getting emails about this, the evidence does not support that there's any cancer risk, or any other health risk from aspartame or sucralose; they're totally fine. We are not gonna do a deep dive on that--

E: (laughing) Oh, gosh.

S: --just to say, "Don't believe the Internet." There's just a lot of misinformation about them on the Internet. The data actually doesn't support any health risk--

E: Dosage matters!

S: Yeah.

C: (chuckles)

S: Like, in the studies, even like with saccharine--saccharine got a bad rap as causing cancer, but the amount they were giving the rats in those studies was orders of magnitude more than you would ever consume. And the FDA, and also the European Union and other regulatory agencies set safety limits on how much you can consume by body weight, and it's typically, again, it's about a couple of orders of magnitude more than what a typical person would consume, so, it's just not something worth worrying about. You can drink your diet sodas; you don't have to worry that they're making you fat, according to this latest systematic review. They really did look at--they tried to look at every single study published, of any kind on this question; it was pretty, pretty thorough. Not saying there isn't room for even more rigorous clinical studies, but the data's pretty rigorous that we have so far. The other last interesting thing I want to talk about is that you read so many self-help books and nutrition gurus, they're, talking about this diet advice or that, or how to avoid aspartame, et cetera, and they usually justify their recommendation with wild extrapolations from basic science. You know, it's like, "We have sweetness receptors in our gut and that causes A to B to C to D, and therefore it's not good for you."

E: There you go.

S: It's like, yeah, but you know we rarely can take our basic science knowledge and then extrapolate four or five steps to net health effects. You can't do that. That almost never works out. You have to study in people what the net health effects are. Because like here, yeah, sure, those mechanisms are in play, but they're just less than the effect of eating less sugar. It all comes down to magnitude. Even if the effects are real and there isn't something compensating for it, it just may not be clinically relevant. So, until you do the clinical studies, you just can't make those kinds of statements. But that is like almost the entire nutrition industry. You know, self-help industry's based upon these wild extrapolations from basic science. That is just not reliable. Okay. Let's move on.

Making Metals Stronger (18:28)

• http://phys.org/news/2015-11-metals-stronger-sacrificing-ductility.html

S: Bob, you're going to tell us about making metals stronger.

B: Yes. Not just stronger either. I like this because I think material science is so fascinating and so far reaching in our modern society. So this one deals with researchers creating a process to make titanium stronger, yes, but also without making it more brittle at the same time, something that has never been done before. These researchers were at North Carolina State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences and they wrote about this in Kara's favorite journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

E: PNAS.

B: Hey.

C: PNAS.

B: Making a metal stronger but not brittle may sound kind of trivial but it's really – that's the classic tradeoff you encounter when you're trying to make metal stronger and it mostly has to do with grain size. Now not the grain that you put into pyramids. No, this is a different type. To make metal strong, you want small grain sizes, small. Grains are the small or even microscopic crystals of metal that form when many different materials, especially metals, cool down. So you want small grains because – and the reasoning was interesting because if an impact or force tries to break or distort the metal, all the little grain boundaries around every little tiny grain, they prevent those dislocations from going very far. It just kind of impedes their motion so that they can't do major damage. And also, a lot of these grains are randomly oriented so they don't slip over each other very easily too. So all of these kind of work together to make small-grained metals very strong. But unfortunately, the small grains also means the metal is brittle and this is called low ductility. So a ductile metal deforms under stress instead of breaking or snapping. So this is good but it requires large grains that can slip over each other. But the problem is, of course, large grains are not as strong. So either a metal can be strong due to small grains or ductile with large grains but almost never strong and ductile until now, of course, which is why we're talking about this. The technique to accomplish this uses asymmetric rolling. So what you do is you have a sheet of metal and on top of it, you have a fast roller and on the bottom, you've got a slower roller, all compressing and squeezing the metal, making it thinner and thinner. So this creates a shear strain which breaks down the crystals, making the crystals smaller and smaller. So that's the first step. Then the metal is heated to 475 Celsius and this actually makes some of the small grains eat the other smaller grains and they kind of coalesce into these larger grains. So when this is said and done, what you end up with is large grains arrayed in these long columns all surrounded by these small grains, kind of like a payday candy bar, with the long caramel core completely surrounded by peanuts, right?

J: Oh, yeah. That's good.

B: Sorry. Sorry. I still got Halloween candy on my mind. The strength is high because the small grains prevent the underlying large grains from deforming easily. But if the strain is high enough though, the small and the large grains kind of like work together. They deform together. But they do that so they can deform but they don't snap. They're not brittle. It's kind of like if you break a Butterfinger candy bar. So there I go again. So this then is the best of both worlds. You've got high strength and high ductility at the same time, something that's never really been accomplished before and that obviously could have a huge impact on many different aspects of material science. And the other good news is that this equipment to actually do this technique is already being used in industry but it's not being used in quite this way. So the researchers say that scaling this up could happen pretty fast because the equipment is pretty much already there. So yeah, let's see if this really does pan out and we may be messing with stronger and more ductile metals in our future.

S: Yeah, material science is – I mean I read – obviously I read a lot of news items just trying to prep for the show. There's so much crazy stuff happening with material science at this time and a lot of it is just manipulating the structure of matter at the scale.

B: And of course the ultimate expression of that or one of them is these metamaterials and metasurfaces. They just do stuff that's like counterintuitive, like, whoa, matter shouldn't be able to do that kind of stuff. So yeah, so it is. It's got – it's going to change so much in society once we–

S: It feels like it. It's hard. It's like one of those things where you wonder, is this all hype? Is this really going to pan out? But you think there's so much stuff going on there. There are so many incredible breakthroughs that are happening in the lab and they just say, we just need to figure out how to scale this up and how to do that and how to do this. But it seems like we're creeping towards massive changes in the materials that we build our civilization out of.

E: I hope so.

C: I just saw a commercial for a cell phone that's like bendy and shatterproof and waterproof and it blew my mind. Like that blew my mind.

Mafia hitman claims to be missing piece in JFK assassination (23:47)

• http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/617775/Shot-JFK-grassy-knoll-Mafia-hitman-assassination-interview?utm_source=traffic.outbrain&utm_medium=traffic.outbrain&utm_term=traffic.outbrain&utm_content=traffic.outbrain&utm_campaign=traffic.outbrain

S: Well, Evan, apparently a hitman who was involved with the JFK conspiracy is confessing. Tell us about that.

E: Yeah. Well, this came to us from the November 8th headline. The website is Express.co.uk and the headline reads, I shot JFK from the grassy knoll. Mafia hitman claims to be missing piece in assassination. So, that mafia hitman's name is James Earl Files, aged 72 now. Files has been serving time in prison since 1991. He was found guilty of being an accessory to the attempted murders of two police officers. But the news in this news item is that he is being moved from a high security jail to a less security jail, a lower security jail, in preparation for his release, which is forthcoming in the spring of 2016. That's the news part. The fact that he claims that he shot JFK from the grassy knoll is actually not new news. No. Since an interview he gave in 1994, he claimed then and continues to claim to this day that there was collusion between the mafia and the CIA to kill President John F. Kennedy. Files joined the mob after he spent time, he claims, with the CIA and also having been, after his time, he was kicked out of the military. So after that, he went and worked for the mafia. Of course, that's what most people do when they're working with the CIA. And they're done. He worked under the direction of Chucky Nicoletti, who is another fellow assassin who was reportedly a killer for crime boss Sam Giancana of Chicago, the Chicago crime family. So why the collusion between these two groups, the CIA and the mafia? So why? Why did they supposedly want to kill President Kennedy? Well, if you listen to James Files, he will tell you that the CIA, the people in the upper ranks of the CIA, felt betrayed at the time over the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 and how that all terribly unfolded. And basically, they left the CIA hanging out to dry, and Kennedy was about to make sweeping big changes to the CIA. They were afraid that President Kennedy was going to shut the agency down, basically, because it had become sort of a rogue agency. Therefore, the CIA decided to call in the mafia, mobsters, to carry out the killing in Dallas, Texas on November 22nd, 1963. Now, mind you, this is all according to Fields. So here was the plan. Files, along with ex-Marine misfit Lee Harvey Oswald, his fellow mafia hitman Chucky Nicoletti, and another would-be assassin named Johnny Roselli, who was supposedly the CIA link to the mob. The four of them would be the team in Dallas to assassinate the president by catching the president in a crossfire from various points. And Files says that his position, he was assigned to the grassy knoll. Yes. So this is an extraordinary thing by Files, to say the least. And again, it's all part of a testimonial that he has given on camera, and he's done many interviews to this effect, saying sort of these same stories. But he's basically come to prominence because of a particular Dutch filmmaker. His name is Wim Dankbaar. So okay, what's the deal? What's really going on? Could James Files be telling the truth? And who is filmmaker Wim Dankbaar? Well, I'll start by talking a little bit about Wim Dankbaar. He runs a website called jfkmurdersolve.com. He obtained this website. He paid half a million dollars for the website, all the material, and the rights to it from a fellow named Bob Vernon. Bob Vernon was also a JFK assassination conspiracy theorist who had put together a decade's worth of work compiling all this stuff. Bob Vernon himself basically has said that James Files is a liar and a fraud, and he absolutely cannot be trusted whatsoever. But that didn't shake Wim Dankbaar from basically taking Files' story and running with it. Dankbaar has been championing the story, in fact, along with many other JFK conspiracy-related subjects, but primarily the Files story. That's what he's pushing forward. If you go to the website jamesfilesfraud.com, they talk a little bit about Wim Dankbaar and his relationship to Files. They describe him as such, a Dutch national and JFK conspiracy theorist who, through his website and numerous blogs and e-commerce sites throughout the internet, promotes the sale of his books, CDs, DVDs, which many believe are simply perpetuating a massive hoax by imprisoned criminal James Files. Why should you let a good story go to waste? You've got this half-million-dollar investment that he's made, and he needs to recoup his investment essentially by perpetuating the hoax or the myth and selling your books, CDs, DVDs, t-shirts, mugs, and everything else that goes along with it. Wim Dankbaar also has kind of a sordid past. Dutch courts have found him guilty of breaking and entering, stalking, harassing. The court has ruled that his behavior has been abusive and unruly. He engaged in illegal actions against investigative reporters. He has defamed, blackmailed, and threatened American investigative reporter and consumer advocate Judd McIvan, among several other people that he basically has threatened. In fact, Robert G. Vernon, who's also another conspiracy theorist about the JFK assassination, had some dealings with Dankbaar himself. He basically says that this person absolutely cannot be trusted, and he is doing a tremendous disservice to the research of what actually happened, the JFK assassination. Again, these are the other people in the conspiracy theory community coming out against these two fellows, Van Dinkmaar and James Files. It's never a good sign when people in your own community are pushing you to the edge and out. They're basically saying, you guys have got nothing. You're interfering with our other work that we're doing here. We want nothing to do with you, and your behavior, frankly, has been terrible. For Files, for James Files himself, well, there have been many, many investigations about all of his claims about being with the CIA, being part of this assassination of Kennedy, and everything that he has said about it. And well, let's put it this way, Vincent Bugliosi, who's an author of the book Reclaiming History, The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he characterized Files as the Rodney Dangerfield of Kennedy assassins, and believes that his story was concocted entirely to achieve notoriety nd royalties. John McAdams has said that Files has changed his story so many times, on so many occasions, it's basically almost impossible to keep track of what he has said, when he originally said it, and how much he has backtracked on so many things that he said. So these are what the experts are saying about these folks, both people from the conspiracy theory communities and people from outside who are doing other investigations, and they can't find – and these two people cannot find any allies anywhere, or people to back up anything that these guys have to offer.

S: I find that the whole idea that the CIA would hire the mob to kill the president is absurd.

E: Dubious at best.

C: Dubious, yeah.

E: Probably the nicest way to put it. It's pretty absurd.

S: The exposure that they would be giving themselves by trusting career criminals, that's not a good idea. All right, well, let's move on.

Fossilized Brains (32:14)

• http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-fossilize-brain-180957219/?no-ist

S: Cara, you're going to tell us about fossilized brains.

C: Yeah, I'm going to do a quick and dirty dive into a new publication in Current Biology, which describes the fossilization of 520 million-year-old Cambrian arthropod brains. These would be the oldest known creatures to have such soft tissues preserved. And of course, prior to this new publication in Current Biology, four of the authors involved actually described fossilized brains in a 2012 edition of the journal Nature. But those descriptions were limited to single specimens, and when they published, they were met with a lot of blowback, kind of broad skepticism from the paleontology community. And of course, this was for good reason. These people were saying, you guys, we found fossilized brains. And everybody goes, yeah, that's impossible. And then they go, no, but look right here. And they go, yeah, that's just one example, and that could be an artifact. You know, we talk about this a lot when it comes to how science works. Until we can replicate things, it's very difficult for us to dive face-first into a new way of thinking. The problem with fossils is that it's very hard to replicate a study when you're working with limited information. But luckily, these researchers have since then been able to collect seven different specimens of the same species. And of course, I'm mad at myself for constantly picking stories with words in them that are almost impossible to pronounce, but I'm going to aim for it. Fuchsiania protensa.

E: That's closer than I would have gotten.

C: I know the F-U-X-I-A is fuchsian. Yeah, so anyway, this specimen is an arthropod. It looks kind of shrimp-like. It's a beautiful preservation there. And there are obviously six others like it. And what these researchers did is pretty interesting. They were able to use scanning electron microscopy to look at the fossilized matter that they first identified as being brain-like. And they noticed that it was preserved as a flattened thin film of carbon. And in a couple of the specimens, it was overlaid by microscopic iron pyrite crystals. The researchers hypothesized that the only way this brain tissue could have been fossilized is if F. protensa was first caught under a rapid mudslide, an underwater rapid mudslide, likely burying it alive. And this would protect it from predators. It would protect it from the influx of bacteria that would typically eat away at these soft tissues. And the mud would preserve the tissue so that they could lose moisture over time. Now, in order to test this hypothesis, the authors actually replicated this process with earthworms and cockroaches. And they were successful in preserving their nervous tissue as well. But they said that's only the first part of the problem here with fossilization of 520 million-year-old soft tissues. What it really comes down to is the density of the arthropod tissues. And that's really what made the difference. Arthropod tissues actually are much denser, and so they're more likely to fossilize. So study author Nicholas Strossfeld says, his words are probably more descriptive than mine. He says, quote, dewatering is different from dehydration, and it happens more gradually. During this process, the brain maintains its overall integrity, leading to its gradual flattening and preservation. F. protensa's tissue density appears to have made all the difference. And a really interesting thing is that it turns out that these brains look quite a bit like modern crustacean brains. The authors actually hypothesized that these nervous systems likely evolved, again, over half a billion years ago and have been pretty well conserved ever since, which is a pretty striking finding in paleontology, but of course, potentially opens up the floodgates to creationists making their standard claims that species were put on Earth in their current form by God and did not evolve over time as biologists and every other person in the scientific community says that they do. So this is not saying that there has been no evolution, but it is saying that some of this early organization of the neuronal structures in these arthropods seems to have happened quite a long time ago, and this is the first, I guess, repeated description of these fossilized brains. It's really interesting.

S: Yeah, I mean, we know that basic body plans formed very early in the Cambrian explosion, and then...

C: It's easy to see those hard structures, the exterior skeletal structures, the exoskeletons, but the interior squishy stuff, when these researchers first said a few years ago, look, I see a brain, everybody's like, that's not a brain. We don't buy it. But now they're like, hey, I've got seven.

E: That's good.

C: They're all pretty brain-like. Yeah. So at this point, paleontology is really coming around as a discipline and saying, hey, we get it. This is interesting. Let's dig into it deeper.

J: Do you think that there could be something significant they can discover because they have the brain?

C: Well, I think a big thing that it's already starting to reveal, if they're correct, is that this evolutionary process happened way earlier than they originally thought it did. I mean, based on the body plan and based on the development of the eyes, paleontologists thought that the brain was much simpler back then in the Cambrian. And so they're already starting to rethink how the nervous system of these organisms evolved.

Who's That Noisy (37:43)

• Answer to last week: Architectural Instrument

S: All right, Jay, who's that noisy. Get us up to date.

J: All right, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] What the hell is that?

S: Here's my guess. My guess is that it's some kind of animal playing some kind of musical instrument.

J: An animal.

E: Right.

C: I think it's somebody blowing through a natural instrument like a horn or like a conch shell or something like that.

J: Evan, what do you got?

E: It sounds like the Max Rebo band from Star Wars tuning up their instruments before they play for Jabba the Hutt.

J: That is such a good guess.

E: Thanks.

J: That is the sea organ of Zadar in Croatia.

C: Okay, what are those words?

E: The sea organ?

C: Of Zadar?

B: It sounds like a science fiction movie.

E: It sounds like a magic item from Dungeons and Dragons.

J: It's an architectural object. It's considered to be an experimental musical instrument. The instrument is a giant structure of tubes that are touched by ocean water and as the ocean tide comes in, it pushes air through the tubes.

S: Oh, cool.

C: Cool.

J: They're located underneath these huge marble steps and it's part of the rebuilding of this area of the coastline, Nova Riva. You can walk all over this thing and hear all this wonderful noise and it's really earthy. You know what I mean? It has a real earthy sound to it.

C: Can you imagine living right next to it?

J: Oh my God, yeah. You don't live right near it, hopefully. Laszlo Kapschick, I'm so sorry, Laszlo Kapschick, winner this week. He guessed it, knew exactly what it was.

C: Is he Croatian?

S: You win Jay mispronouncing your name.

E: That noisy almost reminded me of the pipes in the caves of Virginia. We used that as a noisy a few years ago. It reminds me of that sort of natural pipe.

S: Those were not pipes. Those were stalactites.

E: Stalactites.

C: Oh, cool. It sounds very Seussian.

S: Yeah. It does sound Seussian. I agree.

C: Yeah.

S: A bombastor or something like that.

C: Yeah.

J: What's a bombastor?

S: It's one of those Seussian instruments they played in Whoville, right? It's in one of those books. It's one of the things they played in Whoville.

C: Sure.

S: What do you got for this week, Jay?

J: This week's Who's That Noisy. What is this? [plays Noisy] Guys, what is that?

C: It's annoying.

B: What's that? Where do you find this crap? Holy shit.

E: It got closer to me towards the end there.

B: Weird.

C: It's like making us all really grumpy, Jay.

J: I know. I had to edit it down. I had to listen to a much larger sound file of it. And I got-

E: I got a sense of formication.

S: It sounded like a blue-footed boobie having an orgasm while somebody played a didgeridoo in the background.

E: Oh, right. You said boobie, orgasm, and doo all in the same sentence.

J: Wait until you hear what it is. It's quite interesting.

S: Okay.

J: If you have a Who's That Noisy suggestion or if you think you know the answer, please send it to me at WTN@theskepticsguide.org.

Questions and Emails

Question #1: Anxiety (42:49)

I would like to begin this message by telling you that I love the show and have been a loyal subscriber since 2008. However, Jay mentioned something in the last episode that I would like to correct. He stated that people who needed anxiolytic medication didn't have the 'brass balls' to do things such as go to space and that they allowed their emotions to overcome them in such a way that they would be unsuitable for such a rigorous environment as the ISS. I would like to point out that Isaac Newton's notebooks record his anxiety, fears, and depression during his college years, as well as suicidal thoughts. Nicola Tesla almost certainly suffered from social anxiety. Scientists often work in collaborative teams these days, but there are many quiet, meticulous, solitary tasks that a person with anxiety is exceptionally good at completing. Our tendency to double and triple check things can be a good trait for lab work, as does the anxious brain's tendency to keep churning our every word and action after the fact. I know that it is a common trope in pop culture to portray those of us who suffer from what is essentially a lack of seretonin as nervous wrecks, but I assure you, we are quite capable. There are many medications that can remediate this chemical imbalance and settle our thoughts, but the anxious person can offer something to a team, just as it benefits with both introverts and extroverts, or autistic and other neuro-atypical people. Jay, I'm sure you didn't mean to stigmatize anyone or to downplay the accomplishments of those with psychiatric illnesses. And there is a concern about being stranded and without the trusty SSRIs, a la The Martian, where it might be harder to function. But, in the future, remember that every team needs diversity. People whose brains function differently can be an asset as well as a risk. Sincerely, Someone who worries an awful lot http://www.space.com/26799-nasa-astronauts-psychological-evaluation.html

S: All right. We have a few questions I want to get to. The first one comes from, well, they signed their email, someone who worries an awful lot. Jay, this is in response to a comment you made during science or fiction recently. We were talking about the medications given to astronauts on the ISS, and the fiction was that the most commonly used medications for anxiety, and you said that you think that NASA pretty much tests their astronauts to make sure that they don't have anxiety.

J: Yeah. My thinking was that it's ridiculous to put someone that has any kind of panic disorder inside a spaceship in situations where they would have panic disorder attacks, they'd have panic attacks.

S: Yeah. So I kind of interpreted what you said as, you're not going to have somebody be an astronaut who becomes anxious by the things that astronauts do. Not that – so the person writing was worried that we were suggesting that people with anxiety can't be fully functional members of society, and we're certainly not saying that. In fact, I found an article on space.com which reviews the psychological evaluations that NASA puts their astronauts through, and it's pretty extreme. In fact, it may even be – it was more than I thought. They really do put their astronauts through a lot of psychological evaluation, and you basically wouldn't make it through, astronaut screening if you had an anxiety disorder.

J: Oh, without a doubt.

S: Yeah. And that's what we were saying. So, just to be clear here, Jay suffers from anxiety, right? You were open about this. My wife has an anxiety disorder. My eldest daughter has an anxiety disorder. Cara, you're very open about the fact that you have just depression or anxiety and depression?

C: No, just a major depressive disorder.

S: So yeah we're very familiar with this. It's very common. We're very familiar with it. We're very open about it. And yeah this is just part of being human, and it's – we're not making the point that these are not just regular people who are fully functional members of society. It's just that NASA is very particular about the screening that they put their astronauts through. I mean, obviously, they're picking people who are in their physical peak as well. That doesn't mean people who aren't physically fit are not contributing members of society. They wouldn't pick somebody who's obese. It's not a knock on obese people. They just don't want to pay for the fuel to put them into space.

C: And they physically can't.

S: Yeah.

J: Let me get into some details real quick, guys. So 6,000 people applied, as an example, in 2013 to be an astronaut. And out of the 6,000, eight were selected. The vetting process takes about two years until the final selections are made. And then once they're vetted and selected, it could be up to 10 years before they actually get to even go on a mission. And of course, during their 10 years of training, and they're still evaluating them. But they vet the astronauts psychologically in two different ways. They run a set of interviews first that's pretty obvious. And then the second round is a lot more rigorous, where they're interviewed by a psychiatrist on several occasions. They also get run through simulations at the Johnson Space Center that simulate being in a spacecraft and a lot of other situations. And this is where they're most likely tested to see if they're claustrophobic, if they can go without sleep, if they can handle 10 straight hours of Justin Bieber talking about his teeth.

E: I'd fail.

J: They're trying to break them. So potential astronauts can be disqualified for many reasons. And some of them from psychiatric disorders to actually marital problems was a huge thing that if somebody is having marital problems, they don't have anything to do with them at that.

C: And now I think that they are starting to understand psychological dynamics. And I think that NASA does see that maybe somebody who is more in touch with their psychiatric issues is better than somebody who sublimates everything in their lives. You could say that that guy looks like he has the right stuff because he doesn't feel. But that's probably not even a good version of what an astronaut would be. You would want somebody who understands their own emotions and can cope with them. And so I do think we're seeing some evolution there too. But you're right. If somebody has anxieties that you would have on Earth, imagine how amplified they would be on a spacewalk.

S: Yeah. You can't have somebody have a panic attack in the middle of a spacewalk. That's the bottom line.

C: No.

S: And it's not just spacewalking. If you're a surgeon and you have panic disorder that's not under control, you can't operate. You can't have a panic attack while you have somebody's heart open in front of you either. There are certain critical professions where it's not a judgment against people who have these disorders. It's just that you can't be in certain critical jobs that where having a panic attack could put other people at risk.

C: And also some people are controlled. Some people who have an anxiety disorder are well controlled with their medication. And that's another layer to this.

J: As a side note, if you suffer from panic attacks, you absolutely, especially if it's minor here and there, that's one thing. But if it's changing the quality of your life, please go to a psychiatrist.

S: It's very treatable.

J: Go speak to your doctor. Cognitive therapy changed my life. It allowed me to control my panic attacks. As much as this is a sci-fi quote, it is so true. I bend like a reed in the wind when I have a panic attack. I let it pass through me. I don't stop it anymore. And as soon as I stopped fighting my panic attacks and just rolled with it, they come and go super fast. And they're almost a joke. I laugh at them now compared to what it was like in my 20s. So you can get help. You can get over it and be happy and move on and fully move on. So please don't live your life thinking they'll go away eventually.

S: Don't suffer in silence. Those are our options. You need to know that. Okay.

Question #2: Meat Consumption (48:45)

Toni, I tried to find some specific statistics on meat consumption. 2010 statistics from the USDA http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045642/ 'Results: Overall meat consumption has continued to rise in the U.S., European Union, and developed world. Despite a shift toward higher poultry consumption, red meat still represents the largest proportion of meat consumed in the U.S (58%). Twenty-two percent of the meat consumed in the U.S. is processed. According to NHANES 2003–2004, total meat intake averaged 128 g/day. The type and quantities of meat reported varied by education, race, age, and gender.' 22% of 128g/day = 28 grams of processed meat per day on average, less than the 50grams in the study. Given this, I think we gave a reasonable bottom line interpretation of the implications of the study. Regarding meat and total health outcomes, I did refer to it on the show, here's the link:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/11/63/abstract I did link in the show notes to my blog article which contains this link and others. Regards, Steve Dear Steve, 'Given this, I think we gave a reasonable bottom line interpretation of the implications of the study.' Yes, indeed. The statistic you provided puts the WHO study into context. Now I'm a vegetarian thinking, if only people would eat more processed meat.. But, as I clearly have no case anymore, I concede my position and thank you for taking the time to respond. This was fun. Kind regards, Toni

S: Another email. This is really, really interesting. So this is a follow-up to our review of the study. The World Health Organization write new pronouncements about the risks of eating meat, red meat and processed meat. A listener by the name of Toni wrote in saying—I'm not going to read the whole email, but basically saying that—

E: Who's Toni?

S: We said that the amount of processed meat that was associated with even the lowest level of increased risk of colon cancer was a lot and really more than a typical person would eat. And he took exception to that saying—actually, I'm not sure if Toni's a he or a she, because it's T-O-N-I, which is kind of gender neutral. But Toni said that given the amount of meat people eat, it was actually not a lot. So we had a couple of backs and fourths, and this is the bottom line. So first of all, Toni was mistaking all meat for processed meat. So what I did was I looked up—I tried to find out how much processed meat does the average American consume a day. The average American consumes 128 grams of meat per day, and it's all meat. Interestingly, it's mostly red meat, but the proportion of red meat has been decreasing over time. It's now at 58%.

C: Wow. It's mostly red meat?

S: And the proportion of poultry and fish has been increasing.

C: That's good.

S: But those lines haven't crossed yet. Red meat is still greater than chicken, but they're getting close. Now of the 128 grams per day, 22% is processed meat. That's 28 grams per day. Now if you remember, the study showed that there was a risk for eating 50 grams per day, and we said, well, 50 grams every single day. That's a lot of processed meat, and yeah, it's almost twice as much as what the average American consumes. So I still think it was reasonable for us to say that if you eat a moderate amount of meat, even just an average amount of processed meat, you're going to be below that 50 grams per day, and the numbers bear that out.

C: But on the other hand, if you just eat twice as much, which I'm sure regionally you'll see increases, or in terms of socioeconomic status, you might see increases in eating processed meat over fresh meat or meat from the butcher. Yeah, that means that there is a real risk. So I think it's on both ends of that.

S: Yeah, I'm sure there are some people who eat more than that lower amount, that 50 grams per day, and that's what we said. Just don't eat bacon every single day.

C: Or if you do, just eat less than two pieces.

Interview with Simon Singh (51:23)

• http://simonsingh.net/

(Interview music)

S: Well, we're sitting here at TAM 2015 with our good friend, Simon Singh. Simon, welcome back to the SGU.

SS: Nice to be back. (He has a British accent)

S: So, get us up to date. What's been going on in your life?

SS: So I – gosh, like everybody else who's kind of active in scepticism, I've been doin' lots of things that distracted me from what I should be doing, which is writing books.

S: Right

SS: So, a couple of years ago, I set up a little foundation called Good Thinking, or the Good Thinking Society.

S: Been following your work, very … yeah

SS: Well, we had a slow start, but we've now got Michael Marshal, or Marsh from

J: Yeah, we know Marsh

SS: liberal – (inaudible 52:08) society sceptics. He's now working full time. We've got Laura Thomason. He's working part time. A very active sceptic. Johnny Shan's been working part time. I try to put in as many days as I can. And it's great to have this little hub where we can take on our own projects, we can investigate things, we're doing some undercover videos, we're making complaints against various alternative therapists, osteopaths, chiropractors, yeah.

And also, the other part of it is helping others. So, if there are skeptics who are investigating things, and they want some back up, some support, we've got some experiences and guidance, to kind of help them out with those problems.

S: Yeah, that's great, because we meet a lot of skeptics who are very enthusiastic, and they want to help, go and do stuff. I get it. That's exactly where we were when we started this out twenty years ago. It was like, “Let's do stuff, let's do investigations or whatever.” But it's hard, and it's complicated, and you don't necessarily have a lot of the background to do the kind of job that is sort of ironclad, you know?

SS: But sometimes, those people have what we don't have. So, for example, in our little group, at Good Thinking, we don't have any experts in dentistry. None of us are dentists, but there are dentists who we found, who are concerned about some of the practices within their

S: Right

SS: profession. And so they can come to us with their concerns, we can come back to them and say, “Well, look, what's the best way to address this? Let's look at the regulations in the general dental council in the UK.” And so, one of our projects has been working with dentists to look at their colleagues who may be scare-mongering about mercury fillings, and so on. So, sometimes it's about matching skill sets in one area with the skill sets we may have at Good Thinking.

S: The skeptical community's always very complicated in terms of how it's organized, or how it's not organized. That's, what you guys are doing are what I think what we really need, is just providing resources so that people can be more effective in their activism.

SS: Yeah, and also, when people get into trouble, as well.

S: Yeah

SS: And that's not because they've done something wrong, or they've done it in the wrong way. There's a chap Mark Hillbrook,

E: Yes

SS: who wouldn't even identify himself as a sceptic. He was just concerned about psychics. So he went to see a show by Sally Morgan. She's our biggest psychic.

E: Oh yeah

S: Yeah

SS: He just handed out flyers, which just said, “What would a real psychic look like?”

E: No, I like that.

SS: So, would a psychic give you vague readings, or would they be specific? Would they ask questions, or give you answers? It was very much a kind of, “This is how to spot a

S: Right

SS: real psychic.” And if Sally's real, then she'll tick all the boxes, and you'll be fine. For doing this, which he was doing this, I think he was doing it in Machester. Sally's son-in-law and her husband came out and really put the fright in his on. (Inaudible cross-talk 54:58) Yeah, yeah. Well, that's it. So, after it happened once, instead of kind of backing down, Mark went back a second time, and videoed what happened. And it was really quite physical, it was really aggressive, it was very abusive, it was, “You're gonna end up under a bus. We know where you work.” Et cetera.

So Mark just didn't know what to do, this stage. He came to us. He was then threatened with libel.

E: That's right

SS: After what happened to him, he was, yeah, anyway. So, we got friends, and we got solicitors, and barristers that help out with this. So we spent about four months helping him get out of this libel accusation, which was ridiculous.

J: But what was the actual accusation?

SS: Well, I think it was about what was in the flyer. The flyer was perhaps accusing Sally of not being a real psychic. But it wasn't about her at all.

J: I get that, but isn't it okay to accuse someone of not being a – fake psychic?

S: You mean real psychic.

J: Yeah

SS: (Hesitates) It's libel as you all know yourselves, full of grey areas, you know. It's murky. I would say that the claimants in this case didn't have a foot to stand on.

J: Yeah, because she would have to prove that she's a psychic in order to prove that he said something that's libellous.

SS: Not necessarily, not necessarily, because someone may be a fraudulent psychic. In fact, they may not know they have powers, but may try and exploit that to make money. Or they may believe that they are a genuine psychic. So there are all sorts of different boundaries there. But the bottom line was (and this leaflet was absolutely fine). So we battered away that libel action, and then we put this video online, and we showed what was happening, and I think a lot of people who had been Sally Morgan fans in the past were able to see that it's not such a cozy industry. There's a slightly darker side to what goes on.

So we were able to help him. And then, also, once we got rid of the libel action, we recruited sire sceptics all over the country to leaflet at psychic events every day in October right up to Hallowe'en. And when British psychics went over to Norway, then the Norwegian sceptics leafleted in Norway too. So that was a great example of how we could help coordinate

S: Coordinate, yeah

SS: something. Sometimes, the things we do, really, you couldn't do as a sceptic working on your own.

S: Right

SS: It takes an organization. So, for example, we've been looking at all of the regional health authorities, and the funding that they have for homeopathy. And over the years, that funding's been coming down and down and down as they've realized that it's very hard to justify funding homeopathy when there's no evidence for it.

And so we focused on the ones that continue to fund homeopathy, and been looking at their decision-making processes. And in the case of Liverpool, we identified a fundamental flaw in the way they decided to fund homeopathy. We challenged that decision, working with solicitors again. And the solicitors, I think, put forward a very strong case. Liverpool acknowledged what we'd accused them of was correct. They've now decided to review that decision. And we're hoping that when they remake that decision later this year, they will no longer fund homeopathy. And that will be a major cut in (inaudible 58:24)

S: So, let's talk about homeopathy

SS: Yeah

S: for a minute. 'Cause I do think (and I've thought this for years) that if there's any established, funded pseudoscience that is vulnerable, it's homeopathy, because it is sort of the easiest to explain to a non-scientist, to the general public, why it's utter nonsense. And most of the public who believes in homeopathy, they don't understand what it really is. They think it's herbalism or just natural remedies or whatever. So the gap, all ya gotta do is fill that gap, and then people are like, “Oh, that's what it is? Well that's nonsense.” 'Cause it's so patently absurd.

SS: Maybe. (Laughs)

S: Well, we all know that people can people can believe patently absurd things.

SS: It's interesting.

S: I do think it's just – it's not easy. I'm not even gonna say we notorious, but I do think it's one of the more vulnerable pseudosciences because there's no equivocating about it. It's impossible. It is magic. It is nonsense. And it makes our job a little bit easier.

SS: I agree. If we can't win homeopathy

S: Yeah

SS: then it's much harder to win on many other cases.

S: Yeah

SS: But I saw you do something very interesting yesterday, where you were getting people to argue against you, where you would defend homeopathy.

S: Yeah, right.

SS: And you would show people how easy it is for homeopaths to just fend their position with false arguments

S: Yep

SS: or with

J: You just need a strategy.

SS: Yeah

J: Gallop or whatever.

SS: Yeah. And I've done the same thing in Sceptics In the Pub events in the UK. You go in there, and say, “Well, I'm gonna talk to you about homeopathy.” And you know that pretty much everyone in the room already thinks that homeopathy is nonsense. So instead, I said, “Why on Earth do you think it's nonsense? You know, it doesn't look too bad to me.” And I try and counter every single one of their arguments. And I can do a pretty good job because I've done all the ...

S: You've heard it

SS: And I think that shows why so many reasonable, sensible people think homeopathy works, because there are kind of semi-reasonable, semi-logical arguments that

S: Yeah

SS: suggest that it does work. And I remember, there was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Brian Josephson, who invented the Josephson Junction. So he got the Nobel Prize back in the seventies. And since then, he's had a very strong interest in supporting things like telepathy and so on. And it's unusual, it's odd, but he's a lovely, sweet guy. I think he's a little bit naive. But I think he wants to support the underdog. I think, when he came up with the idea of a Josephson Junction, people thought he was maybe a bit crazy, and he turned out to be absolutely right.

J: What is that?

SS: Uh, god. It's a semi-conductor junction where you do various things, the voltages and different layers. It's not quantum tunneling, that's something else. But I'll look it up, and I'll get back to you. (Chuckles)

B: Yes. My understanding, I can't do any better than that.

SS: But it's – yeah, people thought he was crazy, and it wasn't crazy. He won a Nobel Prize for it. So I think when he hears crazy ideas, he doesn't want to dismiss them. He wants to investigate.

J: Just to see if there's a kernel there, yeah.

SS: Yeah

E: That's okay. I mean, is he really being thorough in his investigations? I mean, why hasn't he been able to pick up on all the research that has been done that turns out to be negative?

SS: He was providing a platform for homeopaths, and I said, went to meet him one day, and I said, “Look, this is why it's not just harmless discussion, because people will take this seriously, and patients will make decisions based on what they hear, and they will be influenced. And they will maybe take one path of medication rather than another, and people can die as a result of this.” So I was saying, “This isn't just intellectual speculation.

B: Right

SS: This is peoples' health.” And at the end of the hour, I thought I'd won him over. He was kind of nodding a lot, and he could see what I was saying. And I think he thinks I'm a nice guy. I think he's a nice guy. We're both reasonable people. We both care about patients. But forty-eight hours later, I got an email from him. And somebody else had spoken to him for an hour, and he changed his mind again.

E: Ugh!

SS: So, again, that's the problem when it comes to patience and homeopathy. We can put forward very strong arguments, but a day later …

S: But – that's correct. But when we're talking about regulations, then that's different. 'Cause now you're talking about, you're on a different level. You don't have

SS: Yeah

S: to convince the general public. You're having a discussions at hopefully a higher level. Not that politicians don't make dumb decisions, but at least you could say, “All right, let's transparently talk to scientific experts and come up with some way of deciding whether or not this is worth funding, or should be funded, should be part of the NHS,” right? And then – so, there's a standard.

SS: Yeah

S: You can apply a standard in a regulatory context. And I think that's why homeopathy's vulnerable. And I think you have been making progress in the NHS.

SS: Yeah, absolutely. We've been charting – imagine the amounts of money that's been spent on homeopathy, we've been charting the number of prescriptions, and it's a very rapid decline.

S: Yeah

SS: And now, there are only, literally, handful of regional health authorities – they're called CCG's. And the few remaining funders of homeopathy, and I think it's only a matter of time before they back down.

S: Yeah

SS: And because – and again, I think it's, what other patients are beginning to realize is that they're losing out on their treatments.

S: Right

SS: 'Cause for every million Pounds that get spent on homeopathy,

S: Right

SS: that's a million Pounds that's not being spent on nurses,

S: real medicine

SS: and counseling, and effective drugs, and so on. So, we're getting there. And I remember when James Randi came to London about ten years ago, he gave a talk at Comway Hall. And he was a little bit negative about whether we would ever win the battle against homeopathy. But that week, one of the homeopathic hospitals – we used to have five homeopathic hospitals in the UK.

B: Unbelievable.

SS: That week, one had just closed. And we were just seeing a decline

B: Yeah

SS: in the number of …

J: Is that because they ran out of water?

(Laughter)

SS: A global warming problem, yeah. So, and the good news is that that trend has continued.

B: Yeah, that's good.

SS: Two more hospitals have closed.

B: Yep, absolutely.

SS: And those CCG's, those local areas that still fund homeopathy are really just around those hospitals. And I think they're gonna go soon.

S: And in this country, the FDA, which basically given homeopathy a free pass for the last sixty years, has said, “Hey, we're reevaluating our regulation of homeopathy.” And what we've learned in the process of investigating this is that actually, the FDA has the authority to fully regulate homeopathic products as drugs. They just simply choose not to.

And they made that decision sixty years ago because it was too small potatoes for them. It was only prescribed by a few homeopaths. It wasn't really a big, over-the-counter market. And so they said, “Well, okay, we'll just let them regulate themselves,” was what they decided to do. “We won't spend our limited resources regulating this tiny, little thing.”

But now, sixty years later, it's a multi-billion dollar industry. It's a huge over-the-counter industry. And like, “Ah, maybe we should reconsider,” actually doing our jobs, and regulate against – so, we have an opportunity. I don't know what's gonna happen, but I never thought we'd get this opportunity.

SS: It's the same thing in the UK. A bit of a free pass was given to homeopathy when it was a small cottage industry. And there's a special regu– oh god, I'm terrible with regulations. But we've got a couple of people in the sceptic movement, particularly a chap called Allen Haness of the Nightingale Collaboration. He just pores through pages and pages of regulations, and can give you chapter and verse on homeopathy, and how it's regulated. And so we're now thinking about

B: Right

SS: What is the weakness in homeopathy. And the extra complexity is having to fit in with European law,

S: Yeah

SS: which is not necessarily a bad thing, because European law on trading and fair trading is pretty strong. It's stronger than the old British law used to be. So that's a good thing. But we still, when we look at these regulations, we have to bear in mind what the European regulations say. But we're gonna get there. We're gonna get that Allen's key in trying to figure out what regulations are gonna be relevant.

S: All we need the FDA to do is something they have the authority to do, which is to require evidence for efficacy before allowing each thing to be

J: That would kill it!

S: That's it! If they require evidence for efficacy, it's dead. And I don't know what the chances are that they'll do that. It seems like we have a huge thing … I can't imagine why they wouldn't do it, except out of just completely misguided political correctness, or industry influence, or whatever. But there's no way they could – they know. They know it's BS. They know it's nonsense, and they know what their job is. God I would just hope we can pressure them to do it.

J: Imagine if that happened, how much

S: Yeah

J: It's such a massive win.

B: But more than that, Jay, they've got such a sweetheart deal. You say, the FDA said, “Oh, let them regulate themselves.” They've got a book.

S: Yeah

B: Here's the drugs! They can open up a blank page, and they write in what a new drug, and then that's all they gotta do.

S: Yeah

J: That's unbearable

S: Homeopathic pharmopea, and it's supplements. They just supplement it, and there ya go. It's now FDA approved.

SS: I think one of the things we don't like in the UK is there's an organization called NICE, which is the National Institute for Clinical Evidence. And they review drugs and treatments and interventions all the time. And they, we know they've been keen to review homeopathy. And unfortunately, the department of health hasn't requested that review to be done. That could be the influence of someone like Prince Charles.

S: Yeah

J: Yep

SS: God, for several years, it's been known that Prince Charles was writing to government ministers about a range of issues. And for years, those letters were confidential. And there have been appeals to various courts to have those communications disclosed. And some of them have been revealed, just a few months ago.

E: Yeah, and how revealing are they?

SS: Well, he was certainly lobbying on behalf of herbal medicines. We know that was clear. We don't know what else was said in the years prior to that, or the years since then, or what was said in face to face meetings,

B: Right

SS: or what was said by his representatives, and so on. But that may be one of the reasons why NICE, this National Institute for Clinical Excellence hasn't got involved in homeopathy. But yeah, we're looking

B: Yeah

SS: for what could we do in terms of regulation. Who has the authority to make these kinds of … The other area we're looking at is advertising, because you shouldn't be able to make a claim

S: Right

SS: that's not backed by evidence.

E: Right

SS: And the advertising standards agency in the UK is pretty good.

S: Yeah

SS: They're very good at analyzing evidence, they're very good at looking at claims from all sorts of areas. Where they're weak is they don't actually have any teeth.

S: Yeah

SS: So, let's say a big supermarket's making some claim, and you report it to the ASA, the Advertising Standards Authority. The ASA make a judgment. The supermarket doesn't want to look bad. So it changes what it's doing. In fact, it tries to preempt that by not having a complaint in the first place.

J: Right

SS: Image is very, very important. When you've got a thousand homeopaths, who have no concept of what evidence is in the first place,

S: Yeah

SS: and have no realization that they should be honest in their advertising. When the ASA rule against them, nothing happens, because the homeopaths

S: don't care!

SS: They've actually campaigned against the Advertising Standards Authority, and saying that they're some kind of government agency trying to close our homeopathy, and they should be ignored, and so on. So what would be great in Britain would be if the ASA had more teeth.

J: Right

SS: Or, were also better funded, 'cause to chase down a thousand homeopaths is a lot of work.

B: Yeah

SS: They've got other things to worry about, apart from homeopaths, so funding is a big issue for them.

S: Thanks for joining us Simon. It's always …

J: Good to see you Simon

SS: Good to see you again. Cheers.

B: Thank you.

Science or Fiction (1:09:51)

Item #1: A new report describes a method for adding quantum dots to standard lithium ion batteries, allowing a cell phone to fully charge in 30 seconds. Item #2: A study looking at medications stored aboard the ISS finds that, on average, drugs in microgravity degrade at twice the normal rate. Item #3: Scientists have created the first porous liquid, a liquid with holes, allowing it to dissolve large amounts of gas.

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 fictitious. Then I challenge my panel of sceptics to tell me which one they think is the fake. Are you guys ready for this week?

C: I'm never ready.

E: As bad as it was last week.

S: I think this is going to be interesting this week. Item number one. A new report describes a method for adding quantum dots to standard lithium ion batteries. Allowing a cell phone to fully charge in 30 seconds.

C: Shut up.

S: Item number two. A study looking at medications stored aboard the ISS. Finds that on average drugs in microgravity degrade at twice the normal rate. And item number three. Scientists have created the first porous liquid. A liquid with holes. Allowing it to dissolve large amounts of gas. Cara, go first.

C: Oh God. Okay. I'm going to go down the line. A new report describes a method for adding quantum dots, don't know what that is, to standard lithium ion batteries. Kind of sort of understand how those work. Allowing a cell phone to fully charge in 30 seconds. That sounds black magic. Let's see. A study looking at medications stored aboard the ISS finds that on average drugs in microgravity degrade at twice the normal rate. I'll buy it. Your muscles and bones seem to not do so well in microgravity. I'll assume that maybe pharma follows that same tack. Let's see. Scientists have created the first porous liquid. What? Liquid with holes? Okay. Let me think about this. Porous liquid. So obviously a solid can have holes in it. A liquid. So we're kind of redefining the word porous here. A liquid that allows large amounts of gas. Oh my gosh. Quantum states of matter are so confusing. This might not even be quantum. Huh. Okay. I think the thing I don't buy is the quantum dots. I don't understand it so I'm skeptical of it.

S: Okay.

C: Yeah. I'm going to go with the cell phone is not going to fully charge in 30 seconds.

S: All right, Jay.

J: Okay. So the first one here, this is one about adding quantum dots to a standard lithium ion battery and it allows it to charge in 30 seconds. Interesting. So I do know some things about quantum dots. I mean, in this application, I'm not clear because I have a different idea of what they do. Fully charge in 30 seconds. Wow, that would be epic. Oh my God. Man, that is so... We need batteries to go there right now. That's awesome. Okay. Yeah, I'm right. From what I understand about quantum dots, I can see, sure, that makes sense. A study looking at the medications. On average, the medications degrade in microgravity twice the normal rate. A study aboard the ISS finds that, on average, drugs in microgravity. So it's microgravity? What about radiation and whatnot, Steve?

S: It was a study of the medications aboard the ISS.

J: Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. This is the first time in science we've created a first porous liquid. It has holes in it, Kara. There's holes in the water.

C: Yeah, because that makes sense.

J: And it can dissolve large amounts of gas. Interesting. Oh, I see. Oh, I get that. I understand what's going on there. All right. Sure. That makes sense because there's actually a place for the gas to go. All right. The one about the medication in microgravity is the fake.

S: Okay, Bob.

B: Let's see. The porous liquid. Yeah, I could see if they're actually creating a liquid, then they could make it so that the molecules have little containers or whatever to make it absorb whatever it needs to absorb. Let's see. The other ones are a little harder. The quantum dots one, I'm not really buying that. I know what a quantum dot is. It's just a bit of semiconductor that can emit light. They're really cool, but I just don't see any connection between quantum dots and battery technology. The medications aboard ISS. Yeah, I mean, that doesn't sound very likely either. Twice the rate? I mean, I'm not sure how microgravity would do that. You seem to be implying that it's all due to microgravity and I could potentially see it would be something else. Oh, damn. This is a tough one because microgravity, I'm not buying that at all, but the quantum dots, I'm not buying either. Let me put my dime down here. Quantum dots, standard lithium. Yeah, I'm going to go with Cara. I'm going to go with Cara.

J: What? Bob, what?

C: Bob and I are together. We're unstoppable.

B: Yes, we are.

J: You suck right now, Bob. You suck.

S: And Evan.

B: That's actually making me more confident, Jay. Thank you.

E: Here are my silly comments. I'll do the two that I think are science first. Quantum dots. The first thing I thought of when you said that, Steve, was that stupid ice cream made of dots. I don't know why.

C: Dippin' dots.

E: Dippin' dots. What the hell is that anyways?

C: Space ice cream that they sell at Disney. Come on, man.

E: Right. It just seems so strange. I'm not brave enough to try that. In any case, it has nothing to do with this. But that was the first thing I thought. Now, I think the trick here, standard lithium ion batteries. Maybe we're not talking standard lithium ion batteries. That would lead me to believe, though, that that was fiction. But I actually think that that one's going to turn out to be true. The other one I think is going to turn out to be true is the porous liquid. I pour liquids all the time. Oh, porous, porous liquid. Pour us liquid. Right. See what I did there? And with holes, allowing it to dissolve large amounts of gas. Jeez. That's amazing. They probably accidentally stumbled upon that. I think that was some sort of accident. The penicillin sort of experiment again, which was an accident. And then, so that leaves the microgravity with the drugs. I think this one is going to wind up being the fiction. I think, yeah, right. Bob, I thought the same thing. I put a lot of emphasis on the microgravity portion of this. I don't think it's going to turn out to be the case. So I think drugs. Jay, you said that one, right? Fiction? Yeah, gravity. I'm with you. I'm with you, Jay.

J: Fantastic, man.

S: So you all agree with the third one. So we'll start there. Scientists have created the first porous liquid, a liquid with holes, allowing it to dissolve large amounts of gas. You all think that one is science. And that one is science.

E: The way you said it, you were totally kidding.

J: Steve, my first thought, though, was who cares?

S: I'll tell you why you care. First, I have to point out that Evan was incorrect in saying that this was discovered by accident. This was actually designed from the ground up specifically to have this property. They designed a liquid molecule that could not fully occupy its three-dimensional space because of just the arrangement of the atoms. And therefore, there would be spaces in the liquid, obligate spaces or holes.

E: Like when spheres are all bunched together, you get little—

S: Yeah, there's a—

E: Is that what I should be picturing in my head?

S: There'll be a picture in the link. The link I have will have an artist's conception of what it looks like. And you'll see you end up with all these little almost like cages surrounding cavities. Now, why would they bother doing this, trying to specifically find a liquid that is porous? Well, so that it could dissolve a large amount of gas in it. So what gas do you think is at the top of the list that you would like to have dissolved in liquids?

B: How about hydrogen?

S: Carbon dioxide.

B: Oh.

S: Carbon, yeah. So this could be a way of removing carbon from the atmosphere.

E: Awesome.

B: That's what I was thinking. That's my second choice.

J: Me too.

S: Yeah, they were saying that this liquid could hold perhaps 500 times as much as—

B: Whoa!

C: As regular water?

S: As other solvents that they would use, yeah.

C: Wow.

J: You think it would be good for heartburn?

S: So anyway, so that's, yeah, very cool. And it's a designer material that—for a specific purpose. And remains to be seen if it could be actually used that way. But that's the idea behind it. But they did succeed in creating the first porous liquid, which is very interesting.

J: Awesome.

S: All right. Well, let's go back to number one. A new report describes a method for adding quantum dots to standard lithium ion batteries, allowing a cell phone to fully charge in 30 seconds. Bob and Cara think this one is the fiction. Jay and Evan think this one is science. And this one is science.

E: It's science.

B: I knew it. Quantum dots!

E: Finally guessed correctly.

B: Quantum dots?

S: Yes. Quantum dots, Cara, are nanocrystals 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

C: That's small.

S: Yes. The reason that these vastly increase the time it takes to charge or even discharge a battery is because at that size, you're down below the diffusion length of the materials. And so they can very, very quickly turn from one form into another, right? Into the form that carries the energy, that stores the energy. So it can happen extremely quickly. However, you had to know there's a downside.

E: A trade-off.

S: There's a trade-off. There's a reason why—

E: High extreme heat.

S: No. You only get about three cycles out of it.

B: Ah!

C: Oh!

E: Oh!

S: So—

C: Ha!

S: But what the news item is, I mean, it is that, but also that it's already been known. It's already known that you could get these rapid charge times with quantum dots even on lithium-ion batteries. But what the new research—this is published in ACS Nano, researchers at Vanderbilt University, that if you use quantum dots made out of iron pyrite—you know, pyrite, fool's gold—

E: Fool's gold.

S: That they could get the recharges up to dozens. They said they might be able to get the same effect, the rapid charge rate, but with dozens of recharges. And then, of course, they always say—and then they hope that they could with advancements, get it into the thousands of recharges, which is where you—

E: That would be good.

S: You kind of—that's where you'd like to be a thousand plus for—right? Because if you have to recharge your phone a thousand times, that's basically three years, of use.

C: Yeah. Dozens is not helpful.

S: Dozens is not there yet.

C: Unless your phone is so cheap that you can just throw it out.

S: The thing I like about this—again, I'm always cautious about these kinds of news items because there's always this massive downside, and the promise they'll overcome the downside, which almost never happens. But it's interesting to know that it's possible to charge a battery that quickly, you know? It at least makes it possible that they could solve the technical problems and get it to work in such a way that you'll have a viable battery. It's not—and forget about cell phones. Imagine charging your car in a minute. You know, that's the real game changer.

C: Yeah, because you do that with braking.

S: Well, yeah. It would make regenerative braking more efficient because of the rapid rate of recharge. Absolutely. But you still need to have an external power source, you know? But if you could charge your battery in the time it takes to fill your tank of gas, you're there. Then you're there, right?

C: I had to give up a job this week because my car wouldn't make it. Isn't that a bummer? This is the first time it's ever happened. But I was going to be booked to go do a story in Santa Barbara, and it's 95 miles, and it wasn't worth it for me to take the risk. But if I could stop off at a station on the way and just recharge—

S: You have an electric car?

C: Yeah, I have an electric car. Fully electric. I can't rely on gas at all.

S: Yeah, I think that's why—I think we've talked about this before. What killed the electric car, that's what killed the electric car.

C: Which in LA is almost never a problem. But there's no way I could have this car if I still lived in Texas. Are you kidding me?

S: Yeah. The range isn't quite there yet. There's situations where it's inconvenient, even to the point where you can't do what you need to do. So you can't replace your gas car because it doesn't have the convenience of unlimited, potentially unlimited range.

C: Well, it can, but only if you have a very particular lifestyle and you live in a very particular place. So this is the first time this has been an issue for me in a year and a half.

S: Yeah.

C: You know, so it's like, okay, once in a blue moon, it's still worth it to have the car. But yeah, I mean, if I could stop off and push a button, oh my God, that would be amazing.

S: And the time it takes you to go into the Kwik-E-Mart and buy a drink and come back out, your car is charged. Yeah, that's what we need.

C: So cool.

S: So this means that a study looking at medications stored aboard the ISS finds that on average, drugs in microgravity degrade at twice the normal rate is the fiction because the study showed that they degrade at the exact same rate as medicines on earth. So medicines do not seem to degrade faster in space, study published in the AAPS, the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. Pharmaceutical scientists, yep. So that's interesting. Good to know that drugs, I mean, that's what I would figure. Radiation, Jay, that would make sense. Radiation might degrade. But I think that the ISS is pretty well shielded. I mean, astronauts are spending a lot of time up there.

J: It just didn't make any sense that microgravity would be able to do anything.

S: Yeah, I just made that up.

C: Oh, you guys. Doesn't it degrade your bones? Did I just make that up?

S: Yeah, but they're alive, you know?

C: That's true.

S: Medicine is not alive. Yeah, but anyway, they did the study because it wasn't known. They wanted to know, do drugs last longer? And that's the other interesting thing how drugs have expiration dates. They're real. The expiration dates on drugs are real. It's not just one of those things like-

J: Yeah, they lose their potency to the point where they're not effective.

S: Chemicals break down over time.

E: Is it 80%? Or is it based drug per drug? Is there a different number per drug as to when the expiration date is?

S: Well, the time is drug to drug, but the cutoff is the same. I think it's something like 80%.

E: 80%? That's what I thought it was.

C: To be clear, that just means-

S: Down to 80%. Yeah.

C: -they've degraded. It doesn't mean they're now dangerous to take. It just means they're not effective anymore.

B: Or useless.

S: They don't work. So you can't rely on the dosing anymore.

B: Not as effective. Not as effective.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:24:15)

"We ignore public understanding of science at our peril" - Eugenie Clark

S: All right. Evan, give us the quote this week.

E: This week's quote. "We ignore public understanding of science at our peril." Yes, we do. I'm sure many people have perhaps said that or something like it, but this quote-

S: Carl Sagan certainly expressed that.

E: -this particular quote, right. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we may have come across it before in other readings that we've done, but this is specifically attributed to Eugenie Clark. Now you may know the name Eugenie Clark. She is sometimes referred to as the Shark Lady.

S: Of course.

E: Known for her research on many sorts of fish, including poisonous fish of the tropical seas, but mainly, mainly for her behavior of sharks. She was a pioneer in the field of scuba diving for research purposes. She only passed away earlier this year at age 92.

S: 92. Good run. It seems like a lot of the scientists we talk about live a long time.

J: Because they're probably living healthy.

S: Yeah, probably. Maybe just being smart makes you live longer.

E: That would be nice.

S: Being skeptical makes you live longer. That'd be nice.

E: Boy, if Carl should have lived to be 130.

C: I don't think it works that way. Yeah, exactly. Let's look at a hitch there. I don't think it always works that way.

S: That was self-inflicted. He knew it, too.

C: That's true.

E: That was his bent arm.

S: He wrote about it. He said he had throat cancer, basically. He said it was so predictable, it's embarrassing. Living a life of drinking and smoking, and you get the exact kind of cancer that those two things predispose you to.

C: Yeah, even strong, strong skeptics have blind spots. It's true. Especially when it comes to their own reflections in the mirror.

J: If you enjoy the SGU podcast, please head over to our Facebook page. You can go to facebook.com forward slash the skeptics guide and like our page if you like it. You could also become an SGU member.

C: It's kind of the coolest thing ever.

J: It is because you get to pick a level and be a cool sci-fi type hero.

S: If you are a premium member, we have to mention, if you're a premium member, which is a mere $8 a month, then you get access to our premium content. There is over 60 pieces of premium content you get instant access to. Including hour-long interviews, uncut interviews, extra bits for the show that we do, lots of material that you can't get any other way, just as a thank you for supporting the SGU.

C: That's so cheap. That's two Starbucks drinks a month. That's it. That's two nonfat lattes with whip.

S: You probably drink too much caffeine anyway, so just cut out those couple extra cafes a month and get some premium SGU, feed your brain with premium SGU content. Well, thank you for joining me this week, everyone.

J: You're welcome, sir.

B: Sure.

C: Thanks, Steve.

Signoff

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.

Today I Learned

• Jay has an anxiety disorder, and so do other members of Steve's family. Cara has a depressive disorder. Mentioned during the email about anxiety.
• Cara says that she drives a fully electric car during the Science or Fiction segment

References