SGU Episode 369

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SGU Episode 369
11th August 2012
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 368                      SGU 370
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
R: Rebecca Watson
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century, which we've developed to a very high level, is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.
Malcolm Muggeridge
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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 Wednesday, August 8 2012, 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: Yo.

S: And Evan Bernstein.

E: Hi, everyone.

(all greeting Evan)

This Day in Skepticism (0:27)

• August 11, 3114 BCE - In the Gregorian calendar was the universal creation date used by several Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures like the Mayans. That is the start of the calendar that many dummies fear ends on December 20, 2012.

R: Hey, happy birthday to the universe.

S: Happy birthday, universe!

E: Oh, hey! You don't look a day over... 14 billion.

B: I didn't get a card!

S: The universe never sends me a card.

R: We know exactly what day it started. Well, we know what day several Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures like the Mayans started keeping track of the date.

S: Yeah, but seriously... 369 episodes guiding people skeptically to the universe and no card.

B: (laughs)

S: I mean, seriously? But tell me about the Mayans.

R: OK. So, August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar; that was the date when the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar began and it's probably most famous to listeners of this podcast as the calendar that has everybody freaked out because they think it ends on December 20th, 2012. Course, it doesn't actually end in much the same way that your annual calendar ends at December 31st; just picks up again the next day with a new calendar. But that doesn't stop a lot of people from assuming that the Mayans had somehow predicted that the entire universe would end. But that's the day it all started. Today.

S/E: August 11.

R: August 11, 3114 BCE.

J: All right.

E: Yeah.

R: Happy birthday, universe.

S: Jay, did you know that you share a birthday with the universe?

R: Today's Jay's birthday?

S: Today is Jay's birthday.

J: I didn't even make that connection; that's crazy.

E: I'd sing you "Happy Birthday", I don't want to get sued.

J: It doesn't really get any more badass than that. Thank you. OK.

E: Awesome.

R: Happy birthday, Jay and the universe.

E: How old are you, Jay?

B: Happy birthday, Jay.

J: I am... I'm 44, guys. Wow.

S: Ooh, that's the double death in Asian culture. Four, right?

E: Very unlucky.

R: Try not to die today.

E: Very unlucky. Don't sleep in a room with a fan running, OK?

J: So what'd you guys do for my birthday; like what's... what's the surprise this year?

E: Well...

R: We're doing a podcast, turns out.

E: Surprise!

R: Happy birthday.

J: I'm blown away.

R: You know what? As your birthday present, I think you should get two guesses on Science or Fiction.

S: OK. Done.

E: Ahhh, I gotta remember that for my birthday.

J: Wait, wait, wait. You know what really sucks about that, guys? If I bail; if I screw this up—

(laughing)

R: That's exactly why I suggested it.

J: ...totally evil.

B: What an awesome set-up for an epic fail.

S: It sounds like a good present, but it's really not, because yeah. Not only—if you get it right, well, it's 'cause you had two guesses. And if you get it wrong, you're a loser.

R: Exactly.

S: It's a lose-lose.

B: Awesome.

R: So, happy birthday.

E: So there you go, Jay.

News Items

Dino Mating (3:16)

• The Daily Mail: The joy of T-Rex: Scientists show how dinosaurs had sex (tricky, when you weigh 30 tonnes and one crucial part is 12ft long)

J: All right; well, I have something that will cheer me up from Rebecca hurting me on my birthday, and that is... Rebecca, I have a question for you.

R: OK.

J: How did 30-ton animals larger than, say, a four- or five-story building have sex?

R: Very carefully.

B: (laughs)

J: You're actually more right than you know. As an example, let me just illustrate what we're getting at here. A male Tyrannosaurus rex weighed about 5 times and the female was even bigger. So... and some dinosaurs were much bigger than Tyrannosaurus rex; there were some giants out there. Scientists were trying to figure out how they had sex; what positions would they do it and, well, to quote Dr. Sexytime, they did it doggy style.

S: Doggy style.

B: Jay, everyone's got one question. Talking about the T. rexes having sex, you gotta answer the question: how big was it?

J: 12 feet long.

B: 12 feet?

R: Nuh-uh.

J: 12 feet long. Yes!

B: Oh, boy.

S: That's the estimate.

J: Speculate, yep.

R: But he probably said it was 13.

(laughter)

J: Scientists believe that they did it doggy style because of a few different things. One of them—they observed the largest land-based mammals and those those animals have sex from behind and after viewing them doing it, there's reasons why they needed to do it. And it really just boils down to: it's the only way that they can adjust their bodies so they could actually mate.

S: Yeah; I may lack imagination here, but I'm not sure what the other option would be.

R: The other option to doggy style? I'm going to have to have a conversation with Joc.

E: Reverse cowgirl or something?

J: Well, no; there is another option, Steve, because I'm sure either way, they were doing it in the doggy-style position, but there are some scientists that believed that most, if not all dinosaurs had to do it in water, except the smaller jumpy types. The big ones had to do in water to get an assist, and they figured this out—

R: "Get an assist", like basketball? (laughs)

J: (laughs) Some scientists would observe crocodiles. And crocodiles would use their buoyancy to get in position, and you might not know, but crocodiles don't actually insert a penis; they actually just drop seed. So, even still, they do hover over each other, and there is like kind of like a doggy-style position going on. So, just an interesting point here: that is called a cloaca. Steve, you know about cloacas?

B: I've heard of that.

S: Oh yeah.

E: Oh yeah.

J: It's a primitive orifice used for urination, defecation, and copulation. So it was like

E: Three in one. Cool.

J: —not too far away from what we have, especially men.

B: Multi-purpose.

E: Yeah.

J: There is still a lot of scientists that don't agree—it's you know, science jokes—crazy scientists, they really want to get to the truth, so the debate each other about it. But for the most part, the consensus is that they did it doggy style. And another interesting thing I found out was that it's very hard to determine the sex of dinosaurs for a couple of reasons: one, because we can't observe them, so we can't observe behavior. Another big thing is that we just have bones; we don't have any soft tissue and without soft tissue, there's a lot of information that we're missing, so we can only really take a look—

S: Or hard tissue.

B: Oh!

J: You almost got me on that, Steve.

E: There must be some difference in the skeletal structures of the females and males.

B: Like the pelvis.

E: I'm surprised they haven't—

S: If you know the female and the male and then you could—you can find features that can tell you, but if—you know, just from extinct species where we only know them from the skeleton, how would we know? Bob, you say the pelvis, but yeah, in humans there's pelvic differences 'cause our heads are so big. Not necessarily difference for dinosaurs.

J: Well, they—Steve, I did read they found pelvic differences in certain types of dinosaurs. But they really don't 100 percent say that it's fact, because it's—some cases they might have like 12 global samples. And you're like, "OK, sure, there's pelvic differences", but it's not a big enough number to really say for a fact, yeah there's definite difference here and there's a lot of other things they can correlate. So it's all inferred; we really don't have that much information to gain about about the sex of them. I think they've identified a few as male and female here and there, but there just isn't a lot of data.

S: Yeah. So that's interesting; the water assist, though, is interesting. So that means all the largest dinosaur species had to live within walking distance of a large enough body of water to help them mate?

J: That's what they—that's basically what they're saying.

E: How much wetter was the Earth back then? Maybe water was more prevalent; less land.

S: Well, I mean, there's lakes everywhere; that is true—the ocean; unless you're in the desert. And it's also not crazy for animals to migrate far to... can you imagine the great migration to the lakes so that you can have sex?

B: (laughs)

E: I'm there.

R: Sounds like my high school years.

S: We have to talk about the pictures—

E: Oh, these pictures are just—

S: —accompanying the article are priceless.

B: Classic. Classic.

E: These facial expressions they put—they put these human-like expressions on the faces of these dinosaurs.

J: Yeah, they gave them human eyes, and it really makes the images look ridiculously funny. I recommend anyone that's listening to this go to our—go to theskepticsguide.org site, click on the link to the show, and look at these incredibly funny drawings that people came up with.

B: Or just Google "dino porn"; you'll go right to it.

S: Also, this is a good time to bring up the fact that we have started a Skeptics' Guide Instagram account.

B: We did?

S: Follow us on Instagram and we will—we have been, for a couple episodes, been posting pictures relevant to the show on Instagram. So you can kind of follow along with any images that we're using for the show.

E: There you go.

S: So we'll have some dino sex pictures on Instagram.

B: Put black bars everywhere, of course.

R: Hopefully it's legal in the states we broadcast in.

Blowing Up Asteroids (9:02)

• Phys.org: Armageddon looming? Bruce Willis couldn't save us from asteroid doom (Update)

S: All right. Well, Bob, you're going to tell us why Bruce Willis would have failed to save the Earth from armageddon.

B: If you insist. You guys remember the movie Armageddon, right? Pretty cool movie.

R: Sadly, yes.

E: And Pulp Fiction, yeah.

S: I tried to forget it, but yeah.

B: Bruce Willis drills into an asteroid in order to blow it up and prevent an E.L.E., or extinction-level event on Earth... but wait a minute; I'm mixing movies, aren't I? An E.L.E.; that's from Deep Impact. But anyhoo, physics students have taken the asteroid details from the movie—they actually took the specific details from the movie Armageddon and they determined something that you probably already knew: that there's no damn way that we could blow it up and save the Earth the way that it's done in the movie. But still, this is pretty interesting stuff. Now these guys aren't Ph.D. physicists, but I checked all their calculations and they're correct. And that, of course, is a lie. But they are 4th-year masters of physics students at Leicester University, and they've published two articles in the university's somewhat tongue-in-cheek Journal of Special Physics Topics and I just love the names of the papers; they came out with two of them; one of them was, "Could Bruce Willis Save the World" and the other one was, "Could Bruce Willis Predict the End of the World". So what did was they created a formula to determine the total amount of kinetic energy, or the energy of motion, that would be needed to split an asteroid; specifically, the asteroid in the movie; splitting it into two and have both pieces miss the Earth, 'cause... I mean, I didn't specifically really remember that, but the people that were—

S: Yeah.

B: The research I read said that in the movie that they blew the asteroid up and that two pieces just kind of just missed the Earth. I think I kind of forgot about that, but... I thought it just kind of mostly just blew up; I didn't know that it was two big chunks—

S: Yeah. It blew the asteroid up into two big pieces when it was really close to the Earth, like about to hit it.

B: Yeah, which is silly.

S: And the two pieces went to either side, missing the Earth. So it really did have to blow them apart.

B: OK; I kind of forgot that.

S: Yeah, which was the highly unlikely scenario that they were going with.

B: So, if you read the paper, the bottom line is essentially: we don't have a bomb nearly big enough to do the job, as it was done in the movie. In fact, this bomb would have to be a billion times bigger than the biggest bomb ever made.

J: What?

B: Huge, huge; absolutely huge. So what is that bomb, you ask?

S: Big Ivan.

B: Go ahead. Ah, very good. Big Ivan, or Tsar Bomba—I'm not sure how you pronounce it—this is built by the Soviet Union and detonated the day before Halloween in 1961. This was an amazing bomb; it had a yield of 50 megatons, or 50 million tons of TNT, and I didn't know this—Steve, did you know this? This bomb was actually designed to be a hundred megatons, but they purposely gimped for two really important reasons. The first one is that—to reduce the nuclear fallout, which would have been extensive. If this thing went off at 100 megatons, it would have literally spewed more radiation into the atmosphere—like, 25 percent of the total atmosphere that's ever gone into the atmosphere, this bomb would've upped it by 25 percent. I mean, it would've been just huge.

J: Well, how big was it, Bob?

B: 50. 50 megatons.

J: So why would that—why would doubling it make such a difference?

B: Well, they actually made it very efficient and safer by—I think they lined critical pieces of it with lead that actually—that cut the yield in half. But the other interesting thing that they did—the other reason why they didn't do it was that it actually would have destroyed the drop plane. If they dropped the hundred-megaton version, the plane would have actually been just vaporized, and the pilots, I don't think they would have been very happy if they were going to go on a suicide mission. So two very good reasons why they had to do that but it's interesting that it actually could have very easily been 100 megatons. The atmosphere... you know, this thing created an immense disturbance in the atmosphere. This disturbance actually orbited the Earth 3 times. It was this huge thing. I mean, I don't think it caused any problems, but still it lasted three orbits of the earth and I found a really—

J: What kind of disturbance, like a weather disturbance?

B: Well, kind of. I mean, it was an atmospheric disturbance; they really didn't go into too must detail. But it was a disturbance that was detectable and they tracked it and it went around the Earth three times. Somebody who went to ground zero described it as, "the ground surface of the island has been leveled, swept, and licked so that it looks like a skating rink." It was like almost perfectly smooth; they couldn't believe it. Now to put the size of this thing into a little bit of context, the Hiroshima bomb was about 15 kilotons, or thousands of tons of TNT. Now Ivan made that look like a total firecracker. So, the point—obviously point now is that the Armageddon asteroid would laugh at Ivan. To split it in two, the students determined that you would need eight hundred trillion terajoules or—here you go, Evan;—800 yottajoules. Very few occasions where you can actually use that word. Tons and tons of energy, and poor little Ivan can only produce 416,000 terajoules. So it was just a tiny amount; not nearly enough that could have split that thing in two. So we would need not a gigaton bomb, but we would need a petaton nuclear weapon, and if you really wanted to crack this asteroid in two. Wikipedia had a great quote describing what a petaton bomb is. They said that this is "usually restricted to astronomical events such as meteor impacts or large science fiction weapons."

(laughter)

E: Sounds like blowing up Alderaan.

S: Yeah, Alderaan.

B: Yeah, right? Actually—actually, no. But not a bad guess. A petaton is equivalent to about a magnitude 12 earthquake, which is interesting, because a 12 earthquake is impossible on the Earth; there's no faults that are big enough to create anything more than a 10, so a 12, as you could imagine, since it's logarithmic, would be immense. Another comparison would be a 60-kilometer meteorite hitting the Earth at 25 kilometers per second. Huge, huge amounts of kinetic energy and here—oh, another one: it would be—a petaton bomb would be about five thousand times more energetic than the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs. So just a huge, huge—as you can imagine. Oh, and this statistic blew me away. It would create a crater—

E: Literally.

B: Yeah. It would create a crater bigger than the United States. 5,000 miles wide, and of course, all life would be wiped out, except maybe bacteria, but I suspect that even they would be completely blown away. I just think the entire surface of the Earth would probably be molten.

S: So when are we building this bomb?

B: (laughs) Yeah, right?

E: And we can't allow a bomb gap like this to exist. Someone else'll build it first.

S: Talking about nuclear explosions, have you guys seen the YouTube video, which is like—which is a map of nuclear explosions on Earth from 1945 to 1998?

B: Yeah, that was cool.

S: It shows where on the Earth the explosion occurred and which country was responsible for it. It's interesting.

E: Hydrogen versus atomic...

J: What was interesting about it; like, were you surprised by what you saw?

S: I was surprised by how many nuclear explosions—bombs have been exploded on the Earth in the last 50 years.

B: Yeah, there's a lot.

S: The US has exploded over a thousand nuclear weapons.

B: That's a lot.

S: We'll have the link to that on the show notes.

B: Needless to say, we won't have a bomb that big for quite a while. I was thinking, "all right; what if we magically had one right now; Bam, here's a petaton bomb." It wouldn't even matter, because it turns out that this asteroid—if we were going to really want to blow this thing up—this asteroid would have to be split, ironically, at the moment our technology would allow was to detect it. So, the moment our best telescope coould determine that this asteroid even existed, we'd have to blow it up right then and there. Otherwise, it would be too close.

J: Bob, this is like a horrible news item. Like, there's nothing good about this.

S: Well, this is not the way that we would deflect an asteroid that was gonna hit the Earth.

B: No, I know. Clearly not. It's not the way to do it. There's so many other ways. My favorite is the gravity tractor idea, where all you gotta do is park a spaceship nearby and let its gravitational pull kind of change its trajectory. But again you have to detect this thing very soon and get there very fast if you want to do it, 'cause it takes a lot of time. And, as usual, the movie was far, far off, but still you know, what do you expect.

S: It was per dramatic effect.

B: Yes.

S: Not scientific accuracy.

Punching for God (17:20)

• Huffington Post: Todd Bentley Controversy: British MP wants to ban preacher from United Kingdom for kicking people

S: But speaking of fun; Evan, you're going to tell us about the preacher who punches people for God.

R: Wait, what?

(chuckling)

J: No, that can't be true.

R: Weirdest segue ever.

E: This is the one of those things that you really don't believe it when you first hear it; like, it has to be a pun, or The Onion came up with it, or it's an old parody; lost, recently resurfaced. No. This is real. So, meet pastor Todd Bentley of the Fresh Fire Ministries of Florida.

J: When you say "meet", as in like "hello", or meat as in M-E-A-T?

E: I'm about to give you a introduction to him. So, meet, M-E-E-T.

J: Oh, thank you; OK.

E: So here you are. His statistics are impressive: Age 36; about 6'4", 325 pounds; a former Hell's Angel, that's a biker gang; convicted of sexual assault at age 15; discovered fundamental Christianity at age 18 and he claims to have healed dozens of people of their deadly diseases and serious injuries by doing things like, oh, kicking them in the face and punching them in their injured areas and kneeing them in their abdomens.

S: (British accent) Are you sure that's necessary?

(laughter)

S: Yeah, he says yes it is.

E: I'm afraid it is. He preaches in a revivalist style of getting up in front of very large audiences, kind of these... like a concert, almost.

S: And, he's Canadian, so don't blame us for this one.

E: Yeah well, though he resides in Florida, you're right; he is Canadian. So we have to kind of share him with other parts the world.

J: So actually—like, he hits people?

E: Yeah. Well... here, let me tell you a little bit more about it and then I'll get to the—we'll come back to the hitting point in just a minute, because we have to kind of set it up a little bit.

B: Oh really?

E: Because he—the thing about Todd Bentley is he likes to tell stories. Lots of stories. I mean, he comes up with stories that make the Bible look like a scientific journal. That's the kind of stories he tells. But these revivals that he organized and still does on a smaller scale, though were as large as 10,000 people at a time. 10,000 true believers would pack into these tents at a time to see him. In his first 5 weeks of transmitting his show via youstream, he had a million viewers. In 2008 he preached live to audiences totaling over 400,000 people. So this person has influence and reach. He had to leave his ministry for a while after ABC did an exposé on him and he kinda had to retreat to the shadows, shall we say, for a little while. But he's resurfaced recently, and he's going back on a tour and he's trying to bring his tour to the United Kingdom. His method is called "holy inspiration" and.. you know, by punching and kicking and kneeing, and for this reason, many people in the United Kingdom are pressuring their leaders to ban his intended visit to their country later this month. And member of Parliament Malcolm Wicks has officially raised the issue before Parliament, so we're going to see if they're able to kind of keep him out of doing his schtick over in the United Kingdom.

J: But Evan, when you say "punch", let's get to the brass tacks here. Is he really—like, is he hitting people and they're getting hurt?

E: Well, let me play you a quote, Jay, from him directly. This is him directly; I want you to hear it from his own mouth, OK? So here we go:

The Lord said, "I want you to punch him in the sternum as hard as you can." So anyways, I punched him in that broken sternum. Long story short, he was totally healed of cancer. The broken sternum was healed; the ribs were healed.
Instantly?
Instantly.
With the punch?

R: Holy shit. That guy should be in jail.

B: Wow.

J: Isn't he crystal clear that he's actually listening to Satan? I mean, come on.

R: He punched someone in a broken sternum and cured him of cancer?

B: Instantly!

E: That's his claim. That is his claim.

J: Well, do you have to have a broken bone that he has to punch to kill you?

R: Yeah it's true. What does the cancer have to do with the sternum and if you didn't have a broken sternum, would he have had his cancer cured?

E: Look, now you're questioning the power of God, and I don't know that that's really wise place to journey off to.

J: Well, his God. Yeah.

E: Well, it look—but the point is, these are stories of his. I could not find anything to correlate—or corroborate his stories.

J: Oh, I see.

E: I'm not sure that he's not really exaggerating, shall we say.

S: So there's no video of him punching people.

E: There is video of him making contact with people, Steve, and kicking them and, you know, what could be called either kicking or punching or kneeing them, but it is in such of light manner, right, that you barely need to touch these people who are in the throes of gyrations of the healing power of the Lord up on stage, in front of these people—I mean, these people are really physically gyrating themselves; you know, that whole shaking occurrence that happens a lot of times with these preachers; they get them all whipped up in a frenzy. And instead of like, laying a hand on your forehead, like we've see Popoff and other do and kind of push them over, he'll kind of give you a little poke in the ribs or he'll kick your shins a little bit if there's something wrong with your leg, you know. But it's a little—believe me, it's a little tiny tap. I train martial arts; I know what it's like to get punched in the head and in the stomach and kick people. He's—from the evidence I've seen, he's not really hurting people at all with these taps.

J: Yeah. But it sound—it's utterly ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous.

E: Jay, I gotta play this clip for you because this is too good. It's a little sample of what his treatment, shall—I guess we have to call it that, for lack of a better term, sounds like. Here's one example of him "treating" one of his... you know, worshipers. Here we go:

Finish it, Lord!
(wailing)
(yelling Bam! repeatedly)

J: (laughs) Right now!

E: What he's doing in that video, as you see it, he's just waving his hand or karate chopping his hand in the air at the person. He's not at all making contact with them. He's just waving his hand; you know, the healing hand of Christ and all that, in their way.

S: Yeah; didn't he steal that from that chef?

J: Yeah, Molto Mario.

E: Exactly. No, what's his name... Emeril.

R: Emeril.

S: Emeril. Bam! This guy's a walking "Saturday Night Live" skit, right? You can see... the Hell's Angel with the tattoos who punches people as part of the healing service.

E: Guys, it gets better, because in December 2011, he told an audience that he had a hand in bringing 33 people back from the dead.

R: To punch them?

E: Twenty of the cases were—he's claims medically verified. So, you understand what I'm trying—I'm trying to put this into its proper context. This guy is such a big talker and he's so, so deep in his own feces when it comes to all of this. But that's primarily what he is; he is all—he is a show pony and nothing else, at best. And that's an insult to show ponies.

R: You're right, Steve. That was fun!

(laughter)

S: Yeah; I mean, I saw a video of him doing his service, and yeah, you're right, Evan; it is just a show. I mean, he's like a stand-up comedian in his—the way he talks, his demeanor; the way he tells stories. Then he throws a little healing in there. It's a lot of showmanship.

E: Lotta showmanship and a lotta big talking.

Quickie with Bob: Curiosity Update (24:30)

YouTube: Curiosity's Descent

S: Well, before we go on with our last news item, I want a quickie with Bob.

B: Whoa. So soon?

R: Wow. It's been a while.

J: Yeah. I haven't really done that in a while.

B: (laughs)

E: Like the dinosaurs do.

R: I hope the thrill hasn't gone.

B: No. Well, you tell me. This is your quickie with Bob and thank you, Steve. You're going to have an awesome time. I have to, of course, give a quick update about the newest denizen of Mars, the Curiosity rover.

J: Yeah, baby!

B: Oh my God; I was so happy that that thing just didn't crash onto the surface. 'Cause you know, I trust NASA; they've all... they're brilliant; they did a fantastic job, but this was such an untested, untried maneuver. So complicated; so many different things could've gone wrong. Even if one tiny little thing went wrong, it would've ended in disaster. So I was really nervous. Not as nervous, of course, as all the engineers that worked on it, so I'm sure they're just... are so happy about this. It was just an amazing showcase of technology, hard work, and a little luck, of course. So, for Curiosity, the next couple of years—Earth years—it will use its plethora of scientific instruments in the Gale Crater to determine things like if Mars ever had conditions that are suitable for microbial life. It'll also spend a good deal of its time heading for Mount Sharp, which seems to have had a very watery past; the bottom parts of the mountain could've—they determined from space images that, in the past, it was lots of water down there. But in the short term, it'll spend its first few weeks not doing wheelies, but just hanging out while we go through a battery of diagnostic tests so that we can give it a clean bill of health and so far everything looks good. And it will also, and has already, been sending us very cool pictures of its local environment. So definitely go to the NASA site and check them out and they're also on lots of other sites. So I just wanted to say congratulations, NASA; you guys totally kicked some butt. And this has been your quickie with Bob; I hope it was good for you, too.

S: So guys, did you see the video of the descent?

B: I was I was disappointed with that video. I mean, there's not much—

S: What'd you expect, Bob?!

E: Like, 7 cameras—

S: High-resolution—

R: He wanted HD, like...

E: You want Al Michaels there calling the shots?

B: No. When I jumped out of a plane, there was a guy that jumped with us with a helmet camera on and a camera. So they should've had two probes: One to film it and one to actually do it. I would've been very happy.

J: Bob, they were already a billion dollars over their original billion-dollar budget.

B: (laughs) Yeah, right.

J: So they needed to put in another hundred-million-dollar camera, right? Come on.

B: That's all I'm asking. It would've been so cool to see the whole Seven Minutes of Terror going into the atmosphere. It would've been great. I know it's unrealistic, but it doesn't matter. I can imagine it.

S: You can see the heat shield dropping away and then you see it descending down to the surface and then when the retros kick in, you can see it kick up a lot of dust. It was cool.

J: It was awesome.

S: In an article on the BBC, Curiosity project scientist Jon Grotzinger made this comment. He said, "you would be forgiven for thinking that NASA was trying to pull a fast one and we actually put a rover out on the Mojave Desert and took a picture. A little Los Angeles smog coming in there."

B: Oh boy.

S: Really? You really needed to say that?

B: He really said that?

E: Mars hoax!

B: Oh, my God.

S: He's commenting on the fact that the landscape can look like the desert, you know? Doesn't look that much different that Earth. But did you really have to put it that way?

B: Oh, God. I didn't know that.

S: It's a little poorly chosen, I think, words.

J: Yeah, you know, in the heat of the moment, you know, I can forgive him for it; he doesn't realize that every skeptic in the world is clawing their eyes out at that.

B: But, you know, if you think about it, he's really—it's really not going to change any minds, what he said. If you believe it, you're going to be rational, and you're going to believe it and if you don't believe it, a little bit of extra—one extra bad quote isn't—you know—

S: Yeah, it's not going to change anything. But he could've expressed that without evoking the specter of a NASA conspiracy. You know?

B: Yeah. True.

S: Just given the history, probably was not a good idea.

J: You got idiots like Joe Rogan out there that are going to turn that into something.

S: "Why would he say that? Is he conveying a message?"

Occ the Skeptical Caveman (28:43)

• Kickstarter: Occ the skeptical caveman - A new webseries

S: Jay, you're going to tell us about Occ the Skeptical Caveman. Who is this character?

J: Occ the Skeptical Caveman is the pilot episode of a web series that we recently launched a Kickstarter for. So right now we definitely have—the original premise is in the can and that's the pilot episode and we're writing—feverishly writing the next 4 episodes in the hopes that we're going to get funded. Particularly excited about this web series for a number of reasons. One: we did find a way to infuse the skeptical message with good skeptical information in that, but now we can; we came up with a skeptic who's a cave man and he's in a tribe full of morons and he's trying to survive and he's trying to be honest to his intellect while surviving. And it's a ton of fun and it's very challenging shoot.

S: We really want to break in to video production more. We've done, as Jay said, a number videos; we have TrueFellas, Passing Over, the G hunters, and now Occ the Skeptical Caveman. And making videos is ten times more difficult than making—doing audio; more, actually; to produce a 5-6 minutes skit for YouTube takes a month with a lot of equipment, a lot of people. The good news is over the years we have to put together a crew of actors and technical people; people who could do all the different aspects of putting a video together; the filming and the lighting, et cetera. So we have the people; we have put a writing team together; George Hrab joined our writing team and we just need your support, you know, to fund these video productions. And more than that, we have a goal for the Kickstarter campaign is $17,000, but that's enough—that's what we need to do this web series, but if we could fully fund it, then SGU Video Productions can do a lot more as well. We have lots of other video ideas as well; I've written a number of episodes for more of a skeptical lecture series that I'd like to do for YouTube. I think YouTube is a really great venue for outreach; you know, we're all about bringing more people into the skeptical movement. We get emails still every week from people who say that—and think about this: if you're listening to this show, what did—how many of you out there didn't know the skeptical movement existed until you stumbled upon us on iTunes. Or maybe even started listening to us and weren't skeptical and then eventually was... won over to the skeptical worldview. We get emails with those stories every week. The podcast has been great skeptical outreach, but we need to break into other venues to try to keep growing—keep growing our movement. Our mission is to make the world more critical thinking scientifically literate and skeptical place. And we absolutely need the support of our listeners to do that. There are multiple movements and organizations arrayed against us on every topic you can imagine that are ridiculously well funded. I mean, the Discovery Institute is promoting creationism and eroding science education; they have millions of dollars. The anti-vaccine movement has millions of dollars. Everything— every topic that we talk about, there is a well-funded movement out there trying to degrade science or oppose science or promote nonsense and we have a small—vigorous and effective but small skeptical movement that's woefully underfunded; I mean, we operate on a completely shoestring budget trying to fight all of these well-funded organizations. So, every now and then—we don't do it very often, but every now and then we absolutely need to ask you to support what we do so that we can keep getting the message out there.

J: I wanted to talk a little bit more about why we chose video and why we think that this is going to be really effective for outreach, and part of it is: that when you're on YouTube, you surf YouTube in a way that you really can't surf podcasts. You know, you see a two-minute or 30-second or a five-minute clip on YouTube, and every time you click to a video, you see a new list of videos show up in the right-hand column. And you do that thing where you just play a series of videos and you're randomly—kind of randomly getting to a next group of videos; every time you click, that right bar changes, and we're hoping that people will find our videos that way and obviously we're going to do some other things, too, to advertise the video and get more people to see it. But, like Steve was saying, the kind of outreach that we do—the kind of activism we do here at the Skeptics' Guide is we try to educate people and we try to entertain them at the same time. And the fact is, though, we want to continue broadening our audience; that's the whole point; we don't want to just be preaching to the choir, as we constantly say. We want to bring in new people and we want those people to teach their kids and then, hopefully, with enough of this, we can make a difference. So that's why the YouTube video idea is an imperative for us now. That's our next level of outreach that we want to move to. This is just the beginning; we have a lot of plans and a lot of fantastic ideas that we want to work on, but any little bit that you could do will really give us a strong push to make this happen.

S: The truth is—the sad truth is, it's really hard to break into mainstream TV, or cable or whatever, with a hardcore skeptical message. Not for lack of trying, it's just really hard to do. Once you get up to the upper echelons of producers, they want to do things that are tried and true; they don't want to take a risk with something new like a skeptically themed show. While we're still working on that, unfortunately, it's just not coming to fruition. So in the mean time, we need to produce our own videos, take advantage of the Internet and the medium that we have to get the message out, to expand movement, to educate skeptics and make the world a more critical thinking place. So check out our Kickstarter campaign; the way that works—the way Kickstarter works is we set the minimum we think we need to do the project, and if we meet that minimum, then we get the donations. If we don't make the minimum, unfortunately, we don't anything at all. So we really need your support during this campaign. We've got 3 weeks left to meet our goal. Take a look, also, at the gifts that we give as a thank you for each level of donation, and we've recently added a new thank you to our donors. For those who pledge $25 or more, either have up to this point or do from this point forward, you will be entered into a raffle with the opportunity to win one of three thank yous that you get to choose. 5 people will be selected from among those, again, who donate $25 or more. One of those people to choose between either a guest rogue on the SGU—you get to come on the show for the whole show; we've done this before; it's always been fun; it's always worked out really well—so you get to be a guest rogue, or you could choose a VIP special guest of the SGU at next year's NECSS. That's the skeptical conference that we help run in New York City. Or, you can choose to have a speaking role on an upcoming episode of Occ the Skeptical Caveman; we'll actually give you a named character, and you'll definitely have at least one line and you'll get to hang out with us for the whole weekend while we shoot one of the episodes. The remaining four winners will receive a 16-gigabyte thumb drive with all of our content that we've ever produced on it; all of our podcasts, our videos, gag reels, some premium content. So go to Kickstarter.com; we'll have the full link in the show notes and take a look at our campaign and the things that you can get for supporting us.

J: Yeah, all you have to do is type in "OCC" and it'll be the first one that comes up.

Who's That Noisy? (36:42)

• Answer to last week: Vegetable Clarinet

S: It's time, once again, for Who's That Noisy. Evan?

E: Thanks, Dr. Steve. Do you like "Dr. Steve"; does anyone ever call you "Dr. Steve", like any of your patients?

S: Never. No one has ever called me "Dr. Steve".

B: Don't do it again.

E: All right, Dr. Novella, here we go. This week's Who's That Noisy—well, last week's Who's That Noisy. Let's replay it:

(tuneless musical notes on some kind of wind instrument)

E: Oh yeah. Thelonious Monk never sounded better.

(chuckling)

S: So, you gave us that that was some kind of instrument, but what kind of instrument was it?

E: Well, that was an instrument which is clarinet, but a special kind of clarinet. This clarinet was carved from a cucumber and then a pepper—a red pepper fitting was put on the end, the very end to give it that tapered end of a clarinet kind of piece to it.

S: I thought it was a cucumber and a green pepper.

E: No, it was a red pepper. Couldn't you tell the difference?

S: Yeah, It had that reddy sound to it.

E: Exactly. There are, apparently—

S: That's amazing that you can get a friggin' cucumber to sound like that.

J: I know, right? How'd they do it, Ev?

E: They just know exactly how to carve the instrument, you know? You just hollow out the center; you put in the flute holes —I guess you'd call them that, for lack of a better term. You know what angles, sort of, things need to be at and how it's carved, and you know, after years or lifetimes of perfecting these kinds of carvings, they're able to get instruments made out of all sorts of vegetables. In fact, there are entire symphonies consisting of vegetable instruments, and you can find them on YouTube.

S: Yeah. You see a carrot clarinet.

E: Carrot clarinet. It's amazing. Just go ahead and take a look; there's a lot of stuff on there. Very cool stuff. And these instruments sound halfway decent. You know, for being vegetables. The first person to guess correctly was Richard Brorson from Malmo, Sweden, who guessed pretty much exactly correctly that it was a clarinet made out of vegetables.

J: How do you know that; like, how do you just know that?

E: I don't know; maybe he's part of a secret underground of orchestra who plays vegetables. I don't know, but that's what he said it sounded like.

J: I really impressed someone could hear that and go, "Yes, that's a cucumber instrument." How?

E: Richard and I exchanged emails this week because I want to inform him that guessed correctly, and he was so excited. He said he's been trying to guess these things for years now, and it's the first time ever that he's had a chance to ring in and give a guess and have it be correct. So well done, Richard; congratulations.

S: Well, what do yo got for this week, Evan?

E: OK, here we go. Here's a voice you may or may not be familiar with, but here it is:

We had been working with a device to collect urine during the flight that really worked pretty well in zero gravity but it really didn't work very well when you're lying on your back with your feet up in the air like you were on the—

B: On the what?

J: I'm fascinated to hear more. What do I gotta do, Ev?

E: Jay, we'll get the answer to that next week when we reveal the answer to Who's that Noisy—

J: I can't wait a week.

E: —and I'll try to maybe play an extra little bit; a continuation of that partucular Noisy. Info at theskepticsguide dot org is our email address, so email us your answer or anything else you want to talk about, and sguforums.com is our forum page. So go ahead and sign up there and chat to us there as well. Good luck, everyone!

Questions and Emails

Kinesio Tape (40:20)

S: this week; this one comes from a listener called Andrew and Andrew writes:

Hi guys, Watching the London Olympics on TV I noticed many athletes, particularly swimmers and divers wearing what looked like some kind of band-aid. After a few minutes on Google I found that it is called "Kinesio tape". It seems it was invented "In the mid-1970s, Dr. Kenzo Kase was already a well-known Japanese practitioner licensed in chiropractic and acupuncture." It supposedly "Re-educate the neuromuscular system Reduce pain Optimize performance Prevent injury Promote improved circulation and healing" kinesiotaping.com. Seems like mostly woo to me...how much of modern sports medicine is science based? Perhaps this could be a topic for discussion. Keep up the good work!

S: you guys watching the Olympics

B: I wish I could use where to buy 100 hot-cold I think that you could say you could put on warmer peace sign um I got anything to get an injured suppose it is okay now

B: I'm not going to watch the Olympics for years after this

S: lot of divers group of color take going to support the pattern on their back girl on your legs.

E: Meridian Pointe

S: it's supposed to do as opposed to improve performance reduce injury or help you or help in injury by supporting the muscles were proving the function of the muscles in your celebrity and waiting explanation how it's supposed to work um sorry about it forward air on line blog Swift and do I look up anything published about it and of course there is not much I'm having some studies actually looking at Kinesio Taping 40 years

E: we haven't seen much of it till this Olympics

S: actually salmon skeptic read about this exact topic two years ago yeah Usher

E: I've yet to see what I don't know I may have a blind eye to seeing at the Olympics

R: last time they were a bit more covered because it is the Winter Olympics yeah I saw it in Beijing and talk about it on Skepchick as well

S: the night has been in the past definitely seeing it more minutes going to like a

J: really dirty it's more extreme with their claims are all the different variations of it. find interesting about it is that really do feel that they're getting a benefit from a very strong placebo effect

S: I don't know about that affect is the second is the literature in its not much but there has been a few studies in a couple reviews of those studies. to review return 2012 concluded that it was little quality evidence to support the use of can you take over other types of elastic a pink in the management or prevention of sports injuries. on a rolling pretty straight razor motion sensor injured cohorts where and force send Sarah compatibility for the studies are needed to confirm these findings. So essentially the good study today so it showed no difference for Noah Factor. judges we just to find a very common scam in any interest let it go I devices like magnets or whatever often wrapped in some kind of bandage and essentially you get some benefit over wrapping an injured muscle; does a little supported bait reduce pain need help keep the muscles warming heat content relaxed must suck to shoot. people are reinventing the east and over and over again but putting some pseudo science in there in selling it for a lot more money but if I could get all the benefits text from any basic supporting tape or bandage or whatever so different with study shows that yep it's not different than any other bandage tape. show on Thursday in the form of the basic physiological studies rather than the performance studies are the clinical studies whatever reason but the one that I wasn't she said yes it does have a second must return to tell if its beneficial retrieving harshly could even say that wasn't part of 22 muscle performance. so there's no reason to think that it's any different to sleep then on any other tape hi and the elaborate did you know it in really hyped claims are being made for it or not justified by anything in basic science research guys been doing this for 40 years and has it been able to put together one piece study? yes you know you're going through with this is elaborate message that is based on nothing you know the perfect age comes up whenever you talk about any sports pseudoscience you know we're there so many things I could talk but the Power Balance bands; the little nose strips don't help either you know that can you see a taping; of sleep date of course psychological studies show that the superfecta formance just eat a conference with direction does does help that's what I was talking about but I don't know that has an effect when you were talking about the peak performance of the World competition people pushing up so much again for mince that there really isn't much room left for something people sex to have a significant effect I'm just saying that the athletes feel like there's no sex a psychologically think that there's a benefit even know there is a will there is it doesn't actually get a real benefit in performance because it because we believe that there is one that sings I don't think is true justice for professional athletes get it together soon little room for variance in a person you wouldn't be competing in the Olympics 50 if you can have it a significant change in your presence because of something like that um that doesn't make a difference like you couldn't factory latest hot hands for nomming on Michigan is the consensus is there some controversy expenses that it doesn't really exist. show for professional basketball players having made warmest previous baskets doesn't seem to affect their abilities the chance to make the next basket doesn't appear to be any measurable psychological effect any to see the doctor performing follows pure statistical chance Yeah I think that's the same reason

J: what is a hot hands exy visitors

S: Street Addison whatever hitting baseballs are you were shooting baskets or whatever that you thinking is that would you make a basket to be more confident you'll make a higher chance of you miss a basket Guild field goal your your confidence in a greater chance of missing the next one today best places will tend to make baskets in a row would be on a on a cold streak with you in like this text just date to the finish line psychological exclamation doesn't exist. I would just be. to meet same as saying that it is a placebo effect wearing a rubber band or nope I'm not maybe four season average amateur athlete or maybe in a measurable psychological fact I don't think you're competing in the Olympics are going to have any going to be on that medal stand because if it is fake strips of tape in the back.

Name That Logical Fallacy (48:37)

S: well we do have a name that logical fallacy this week. hi this is a letter, an email that was sent to me by a gale Wallenberg and Kel writes

Sir, In reading your comments on iridology, I noticed a lot of biased opinions. I have to ask "why does modern medicine concentrate their efforts on treating the symtoms rather than treating the root cause?" I have also noticed that during my lifetime. there seems to be a very high mortality rate from misdiagnosed diseases by those claiming to be using the best diagnosis machines available. Modern medicine is not science based at all but rather based on greed for money. That is why modern medicine practitioners make such fraudulent claims against alternative medicine. If you would not receive any monetary compensation for what you do as an MD would you still be doing it? Best regards, Gale Wollenberg

S: in order to questionable to logic in there in and out of you guys

E: I have noticed during my lifetime to be very high mortality rate is used yeah she's using your own example gracias basing it on but she is witness not actually on what the actual statistics are

S: so that's a total and its subject to massive confirmation bias. what is a test on just your casual out to make sure to how much vacation of medical treatment is she talking about here. just her personal friends and family right KC but she has a high emotional stake and Shake happening today in on my way to kill the anecdote she doesn't say any sources respond to her neck she tells her to reply to all the things she said logical fallacies. didn't really do anything that I said but theaters the appeal to strip personal experience over data

R: Fisher said she's a she the way I am really maybe not the tailor is coming and Rogers TV right now

B: I love you doctors only treat symptoms is there a call the bullshit fallacy.

S: that you're right that's BS propaganda, but what was she a specific style seen that sentence with what is it? "I have to ask why does modern medicine country to country the symptoms present remember cause she's making a promise to be good

S: she's begging the question

haha yeah yeah

S: I know you have to ask if modern medicine focuses too much effort on treating the symptoms to me that's the case to Jesse y sin assuming you're begging the question will do they does that actually true of modern medicine. is this is this a standard piece of it a sin medicine approval tree propaganda modern family tree two covers up symptoms really what's that. face to face medicine is was discovered all the actual causes of diseases in ailments party signs we know what causes ironic that the one hand the keys to the medicine of the reductionist which means that we treat actual mechanisms of causes of diseases in with any excuses of not doing that in the only treating symptoms first made up it'll based upon nothing. Of course we look for the underlying cause of illness in treated when we can identify a pic of you in appropriately denigrating Connecticut I mean what to say if you have pain you to want me to treat pain world star CEO or whatever?

E: be saying that if you if you do treat the root cause supposed to the sentencing you're putting yourself at work eventually you'll get your stuff in it

S: which is not a big deal question

B: I'd love to have her or him go to the doctor with a migraine and you say Well symptom but you know I don't think you'd like that we can't really treat because so deal with it

S: yet but we can manage them then we can see if you can get taking Micronor in bacon have very few retorno migraines free verse of the problem or the street use a little. also name me a cam practitioner to treat root root cause is not me to

J: Yeah but Steve People like their eyes pseudo-scientific practitioners better than your doctors medical doctors

S: note does the true Dida

J: is the day feel better about those methodologies because they think there's a scam involved in to modern medicine

S: OK so here's modern medicine is outside weather is FaceTime free for money so good call dad s really want to get paid for their services the real Mitt of the real they're making millions of dollars.

S: false assumptions about running shoes that are motivations the way I text you when there's any possibility to whatsoever Iridologist can I get to realize every way you take a lunch meeting with your dog is a cold you probably hear you're going to head to bility Steve will be doing this if you weren't a bow

S: 10 years of schooling dollars you

B: people that love your job so much schedule we do for

B: money what are you talking about?

S: anybody either donating your time.

Science or Fiction (56:31)

S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine and one fictitious, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake. Now we have a special theme this week and 4 items. I hope this email emoji word origins of words and the explanation for their origin you tell me which one is not correct

J: awesome steve

S: OK? here we go. Item number one: is claptrap a trick used to "catch" applause from the audience. Word number two: is bogus a machine used to make counterfeit bills or coins. Word three: is straw man - Refers to men who stood outside courthouses with a straw in their shoe in order to indicate their willingness to be a false witness. And word four: is nuts - from "nuts", the same word, meaning a source of pleasure.

J: fake?

S: it easy correct Jay first and you get to pick two as the fake.

E: wow

J: foursome I am I still getting a 53

S: I know that that's why I agree to it

E: happy birthday 44

J: to trap a trick to use to catch applies for the audience Kaching Kaching

S: yeah exactly. to trap claps Rick o'clock traffic

J: I'm not liking this one. it's a trick use to chip in tights people to do plus size shirt does a sign at the turn of the Flies way back for that strict Buddhism she used to be counterfeit bills coins; I believe this one is correct because the word bogie I know that I know that I have something in the back of my mind is telling me yes to that one that's strong man stron shoes do you think that was true. nuts meaning of sources laser seriously. this one has to be true because you would just make up the source a pleasure skeptical podcast.

S: that's correct

J: take the first one clap trap is fake Cinemagic

R: nuts what you mean to me crazy crazy and hang a regionally come

S: theme to this forward

R: yeah thats legit ah OK my other question is: do you mean did these are potential ly Annamalai geez or definitive because because with a lot of words there yet question as to whether or not he knows its the focus of mileage ear you know

S: these are the current best guess or consensus is it is more than maybe like very likely to be true but they're not just a guess or a folk explanation.

R: of the one that's wrong though is that one to you made up out of state calls or is that one that has been gas station folk thing

S: let me say that the one that's wrong is demonstrably wrong

R: demonstrably wrong

S: it's definitely not the origin of the word that does it mean that the definitely is not correct

R: leads me to believe its not made up at the post office is something that has Jess is so I'm going to go with my gut on this. and I will say that but it is cracked rib that makes sense Pago I could move into the idea of it being crap as a cheap trick; on the plane ticket cause fever to cheap to science does dish bogus yeah I can believe that says Richard to me she needed for it Richard to finish eating please Allah and nuts Nina source of pleasures I wish I could see a package on the transition into now I know its crazy from something that Sam Ash in it makes you getting a be something that makes you lose your mind. so everything is just straw man which I do not believe I don't think that is I don't think that it refers to Men's Warehouse strong issue however I do think that that has been a suggested origin I'm going to go down

S: OK. Bob?

B: man um yeah happy I get a second season two to force people to clap like maybe because you even start it take to make it to clap now yeah so I can see that. bogus I have no idea sounds right those. straws sure man I don't know something about strong the shoes to fill with something but who knows what they want to just jumps out at me is nuts. I keep thinking about the famous reply to you no surrender knots doesn't seem to coincide with the wind has to be stressed I mean it doesn't like I meant propylene to be probably am totally wrong but I'm just going to 6 a.m.

S: OK. Evan?

E: yeah um go clap trap kieres trick. bogus bogus is correct because I made a reference to bogus when was talking about money in the context of food there correct pull up their instruments from an extra minutes um. I seem to remember something about the straw man story that would be correct restaurants thinking along the same lobbyist hang out sensors Anneliese nuts with Bob is the action yes NJ to visit

R: am I stand alone again?

S: you are. the one that nobody shows she's focused the machine used to make counterfeit bills worth points is that one is... science

B: hey

S: have you spoken to study was no 720 did leaders refer to the the money or the street corner counterfeit money itself and then be a broad anything but eventually I'll referred to the counterfeiters apparatus um from 1833 when she dies on a coin with the number of guys a great tools think the papers freeze corn chowder making in only large wagon load condition by the Attorney General . so yeah that's and Jared 11 thought that might have been the trick you to catch applause from the audience and that one is... science.

B: 50 50 50

S: really weird claptrap really that's the word but yeah its weird yeah just a yes or extended exactly right the descent cheaper showy languages name that tune on center rubbish that . was originally a stage turn back into 17 1730 and then its use in the nonsense or a cheap show me languages reference on an 1819 later. all right

E: all right here we go

S: so I get to go to Nashua strong man refers to shoot to be false witness. Rebecca think this one is the fiction this one is science and this one is... fiction

B: nice night

S: you are exactly right; that is a folk etymology straw man, but it is demonstrably in correcting people did not showing their shoes indicated they were willing to be a false give away that they were willing to be a false witness in town about the ATL points but didn't see a strong isn't completely known but its use as ZZZ logical fallacy of setting up a easy target logical fallacy strong man is essentially arguing against a weak version of your opponent position that you invent specific you invent specifically to knock down. Now there are some obvious sources for the notion of a strong man in the military training for example txt had little strong men that you would try to knock down

R: Skyrim

S: yes yes for a few could you for tooth scarecrow hey just destroy itself, I was reading, was something that was iconically cheap in worthless use straws to leftover it everywhere which was not a man of straw that would be very weak or worthless. I came across some straws well I was looking that up and that's similar to that specific to the original you guys nobody rich reference was you catching up grasping at straws show only catch is stronger than Katrina now grasping at straws originally probably a specifically referring to a drowning man

floating in the water anything the only thing I have to grab onto. by the way do you guys know the British term trash run in a maze ing the keys for the time in the UK to come

to think of a dirty things

Mountie old

S: is Sally

S: it is Sally is a doll that is some you like to go to for the dolls in the playground in the fairgrounds to be there soon its something you set up specifically say you can knockdown

B: oh sweet

S: which means that nuts from the pleasure is science and the other the specific message to rate for you were pretty much on there as well to regional email to eat any stores radio resource in pleasure in the 1600s. later references to be nuts about something or nuts upon something to be very fond of that thing that gives you pleasure and that morphed to be crazy about something and then just be crazy. shush schedule a shin dad to 5515 not maybe for to head that the metaphor of a nut in head may have influenced "nuts" themes for something to be crazy for it but that's a speculation not necessary.

B: I'm really mad at Stephen King play TV I wrote a Novell a a short story called let that be your last battlefield is really cool and he you said nothing quote from the world were to India I can't do you said that's when I was like what the hell does that mean I'm looking it up years ago and that's why I was so its too much to type of my mind if I never read that damn story be able to put a picture on at

R: you're blaming Stephen King

B: yeah somebody

S: shortened version of the expression nuts to you just nuts which animals are reading about that is falling out of favor because of the connection to another slang sense of the word that's what I see you place right?

E: right

S: now good job Rebecca, you totally nailed it this week.

R: Well yeah you finally picked a scene that falls in my Perry

E: 9.9 for Ukrainian judge

B: next season kind of next week of quantum mechanics

S: got it

B: Thank You

J: birthday you could pick something that I know

R: 50 percent chance of winning this time Jay

J: really I'm cursed this year I can't

S: speak out of your control you can show interest

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:10:52)

S: quote for us on your birthday?

J: I have a quote

E: add know

J: play as the quote sent in by listener name Katelyn read from Tasmania, Australia. anybody to live in a place called Tasmania thats cool The quote is:

One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century, which we've developed to a very high level, is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.

J: Malcolm Muggeridge!

B: I like that name

S: is a creek Dooley or Creek Julie D

R: Julie Julie D movie

E: we pronounce a creek Julie usually but is it crazy to see

E: it is huh a gf that word

R: definitely credulity

J: or I could you lead is Margaret

E: I use a wizard Harry Potter

J: English to your list author media personality and say it to wrist

S: Marion Marion Webster pronunciation guide says pretty lady

B: whoa

E: whoa.

we can go to

B: I think you should take away Rebecca's win that

E: I agree now you're here

R: I'm a writer I can say words however I want

E: this never have even leave the house

S: just how Steve can make a bone doctor

S: yeah okay to the room was really surprised that was imprimatur

B: yeah yeah

reminder for people that wear her to my way imprimatur temperature that's actually correct

E: uh we just passed you guys

S: Jay and happy birthday

J: thanks as a birthday 3435

S: through a lot of birthdays in Stanley Kubrick movies

J: was that

S: at all transformations thing I could get a chance Hylton

R:

E: time is always in a gallon

S: yes

E: days a week in 1992 time to time

E: Tuesday

S: Tuesday yeah widget deliver the TV show

E: reference

Announcements

Dragon*Con Private Recording (1:13:36)

S: well Rebecca how we doing on our a dragon*con tractor recording

R: we do have a few tickets left there to search gone as of this recording so that means that as the times can a reserve might be a couple so please if you want to come, get it at Reagan con it's Sunday night it's good time private party not like a public show Because it recording week at least you get to see how an actual episode comes together, which is very different from a public finance Yahoo messager time do you go in schedule robot.com

New T-shirt Available (1:14:16)

or about.com return after we have a brand new t-shirt available at BSG you fighting space dinosaurs

E: yeah

S: this is my favorite t-shirt diesel gas university SGU big letters into

R: a lot of compliments on on when I wear in town ah thanks to Chloe Ashton, our our artiste for creating that.

Star Party at Dragon*Con (1:14:45)

R: speaking of Dragon Con I wanted to also mention that my friend Maria Waters is once again holding the star party, which is big ger than they do Thursday night before Dragon*Con in Atlanta add to benefit the at the TV and the infamous Society am in memory of Jesse Metcalfe, an awesome astronomer passed away two years ago. so you can go get to get to Atlanta skeptic.com / star party and so please be there Nicole ugly cheese Marion call and George Hrab truck

S: thanks for joining me this week everyone

R: thank you steve

E: Dr

S: And until next week this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe

J: It's my birthday.