SGU Episode 232

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SGU Episode 232
1st January 2010
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 231                      SGU 233
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guests
M: Mike Lacelle
P: Phil Plait
Links
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Forum Discussion

Introduction

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 Friday, January 1^st, 2010 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella–

B: Hey everybody.

S: Rebecca Watson–

R: Hello everyone.

S: Jay Novella–

J: Hola.

S: Mike Lacelle–

M: Hey everyone.

S: and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hey everyone.

R: Who's that Mike guy? What?

S: Mike is joining us for our year end wrap up episode which has become, now, customary.

R: Oh.

S: So, welcome Mike. Evan, you're going to give us a This Day in Skepticism?

E: Absolutely because it was 1975 when Kenneth Rooker discovered the long unknown winter destination of the monarch butterfly in the mountains of Mexico. It was a mystery for a long time.

S: Yeah.

E: I guess they had no idea where the heck the monarch butterflies, all 20 million of these butterflies, would fly off to.

B: How'd he do it? What? Did he follow them?

E: Using tags on the wings of some of the butterflies he followed their migration trails to Mexican territories and he studied it for, well, 38 years of data.

S: And also last night was a blue moon.

B: Yes.

E: That's right.

R: And a lunar eclipse. A partial lunar eclipse.

S: Yes.

R: From my vantage point. Not from yours.

E: Really?

S: Yes. In Europe not in the US.

E: I know. Europe gets–I know.

S: So it doesn't really count.

E: This hemisphere gets cut out of a whole bunch of–

R: All the best stuffs over here guys. I'm telling you.

J: Did you see it?

R: I did see it. I saw the tail end of it as I was stumbling down the street toward the next party.

J: Now, the moon, though, did not turn the color blue.

R: No.

J: As the name would suggest.

R: Blue moon only means that it's the second moon in a month.

S: Second full moon in a month, yeah.

R: Second full moon.

S: And that happens on New Years Eve about once every 19 years. Next one will be in 2029.

B: Is that when Apophis is going to hit the earth?

R: It's around then. Yeah. So we might not even see it. We'll all be dead.

B: It's not going to hit.

J: They refined that, Bob, there's much less chance that that asteroid is going to hit.

B: Yeah. Not in 2029 anyway.

J: Yeah, right.

R: Did you guys see the news of the Russians, though?

J: Yeah! They're going to launch–

R: They're going to blow it out of the sky.

S: Good for them.

J: They're going to launch something and land on that asteroid.

R: Yeah right. I'm a little, shall we say, skeptical, cause I read some interview with the spokesperson and he said that the asteroid was going to come around in something like 2026 or '27. He was very vague and I was just thinking you should really have all your facts straight when you arm your missiles.

S: Yeah, you've got to be kinda precise on that point.

J: Yeah, isn't it possible that they could do something to it and actually jockey it into a worse position?

B: Oh yeah.

E: That was my thought, too.

R: Yeah.

S: They could knock it into one of the keyholes. They absolutely could.

M: They'd need to hire Bruce Willis for the job.

S: So this is the episode where we reminisice about the best moments over the last year.

B: And decade.

S: And the SGU–and decade–and also we're going–

J: Alright.

S: –to talk about some–

B: The millenium?

S: –the best and worst of science and skepticism in the last decade.

J: Wow.

Listener Feedback (3:11)

S: But first lets go through our listener feedback as to their most outstanding SGU moments of 2009. There were a few votes for best episode. I think the one that got the most votes, though, was Rebecca's wedding.

J: Of course.

B: Yay.

R: Aww.

M: Yeah.

R: Thank you. That was my favorite, I think.

J: Well, that was a hopefully once in a lifetime event.

B: You think?

S: I think the second one was the Nexus 2009 with Richard Wiseman as a guest.

J: That was so much fun.

R: Yeah.

B: He was awesome on the show.

S: Two live events got the most votes.

R: We did more live events this year than any previous year because we did those, we did DragonCon. Well I guess that's it but that's still a lot.

S: Yeah.

(laughter)

J: TAM, DragonCon, (inaudible)

S: And much more!

J: We'll be doing all that plus Australia this year.

R: That's true.

S: Yeah. We'll have even more live events in 2010. That's true.

R: Soon we'll get to the point where we're just doing a live show every week. That'd be fun. (inaudible) exhausting.

J: The live events are great. Being there. The immediate feedback from the audience is just something we don't typically, obviously, typically don't experience and it's always great.

S: Yeah. It's good. Honestly it's good for a once in a while thing. The downsides to the live events are that they're technically challenging and often a little bit out of our control. We're at the mercy of whatever venue we're at.

R: Yeah.

J: Yeah.

S: And we also don't control the questions, so while live questions are great we can't use them to set ourselves up to talk about topics we want to talk about.

J: That's true.

S: And they tend to be–live questions tend to be a little repetitive. I mean it's good ever now and then but it's obviously not going to become a regular thing.

R: But there's the hanging out with you guys thing. That's always fun.

S: Yeah. We love it.

E: That goes without saying. Yes.

J: It's definitely a lot more fun for me, as a panelist, to see you guys and have the face to face interaction.

R: Definitely, yeah.

J: Crazier stuff happens at the live events like Bob coming out in a costume.

B: Yeah, that was awesome.

J: Rebecca getting married.

S: Right. Right.

Guests of 2009 (5:12)

S: We had a lot of great guests in 2009. We always do a good job of pulling in some interesting interviews. Those that got the most votes: one was Michael Vassar, if you remember him. He's the singularity guy. A lot of people just said that singularity guy.

(laughter)

S: Because it was just a very, not only interesting interview, but it was a little contentious and I think people liked that. The next one was Rusty Schweickart–

J: Yeah.

S: –if you remember the Apollo astronaut.

J: That was great.

S: That was, I think, my most surprising interview of the year. Phil Plait hooked us up with Rusty and it's one that I didn't see coming until Phil say, "Hey, I can get you this guy." And it turned out to be a really interesting interview. Just talking with him about his first hand experience with going up in Apollo was fascinating.

B: Yeah. That rocket door. That's something you never ever read about. Never hear about. Just those subtle little things that only someone really on the rocket would experience and know. It's just fascinating stuff.

S: Yeah. One e-mailer said that he's been a real Apollo fan for years and thought he knew everything there was to know about that launch and yet he still learned little tidbits from Rusty on that interview.

B: Cool.

J: Yeah there was a couple of things that he said like how much the rocket compresses during liftoff, but when they turn those booster off and the whole rocket snaps back to it's original size, which, I think, it's a few inches that it crunched down, and it lurched up forward and his head almost hit the freaking control panel.

S: Yeah. Cause the loosened their straps. They shouldn't oughta had done that.

B: That's it.

J: It's hard to plan and expect that. In the simulation.

S: Yeah. That brings up that point that here you have a multi-million dollar program, how many engineers and just really people involved in thinking through every little tiny little detail and yet you can't anticipate things like the astronauts loosening their shoulder straps so they can move around a little bit more and then almost cracking their open on the control panel. I mean, they couldn't anticipate that. There's no substitute for experience is the bottom line.

B: Yeah. Just talk to someone who actually went through that. Not only is the guy an icon in history but he did it. He was there. He strapped himself into that thing and did that unbelievable, awesome, science thing that when I was a kid and read about it and saw videos about it, that got me interested in science.

S: Any other interviews stand out in your guys' minds?

R: I think Tim Minchin got a number of votes on the year end wrap up thread.

S: Yeah.

R: And for good reason. Tim is always incredibly entertaining–

E: Absolutely.

R: –and such a wonderful performers. So he's a lot of fun to interview.

M: Michio Kaku was awesome.

B: That was a great get. Yeah.

S: Yeah. Michio Kaku got a lot–

M: Really interesting stuff.

S: Ken Miller was great interview as well and got a lot of votes.

B: Yeah.

S: Ken Miller is an evolutionary biologist who deals a lot with Creationism and just, again, one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful people, I think, on that topic. And Mark Crislip got a lot of mention as well. He's a recurring guest on our show. Did the H1N1 special with us and also has his own podcast, Quackcast, so he has a lot of experience behind the microphone. Mark is always fun to talk to.

M: Award winning podcast.

J: Yeah. And his show is fantastic. I always learn something when I listen to his show. Actually, I learn a lot. He pile drives detail into his show like crazy. But his sense of humor just gets me. The whole time I'm listening to him I'm half laughing.

E: Interview Brian Brushwood was great, as well, because who knew that later that year we'd be eating fire with him?

S: That's right.

E: On the campus of Yale.

S: There may be a video appearing on Youtube sometime soon of us eating fire with Brian Brushwood.

J: Yeah, he's a great guy.

S: Well there are many great interviews this year but those are the ones that got specifically mentioned by our listeners.

SGU's Funniest Moment (9:24)

S: The next category was the SGU's funniest moment for 2009 so before I start listing what our listeners said, do you guys have any that stick out in your mind.

M: There's some funny conversation between Rebecca and Steve about birds. Early on in the year.

S: Can you be more specific?

M: It was about bird jizz or something like that.

R: Was that he jizz one?

S: You mean when we were talking about bird jizz? Yeah.

M: Yeah. You remember that time, you were talking about birds? That time.

R: I do remember discussing jizz.

S: A lot of people liked when we were talking about vomix and pasketti and mamatos.

R: And mamatos.

(laughter)

S: Some people liked Rebecca's line. Rebecca's good for the one liners. She said, "I can't believe the chronic doesn't cure the chronic."

R: I was pretty proud of that one too, actually. (10:11)

References