SGU 10-Hour Show Part 1
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| SGU 10-Hour Show |
|---|
| 2nd May 2015 |
 |
| (brief caption for the episode icon) |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| SGU Podcast archive |
| Forum Discussion |
Intro: (0:00)
Note: This page is not transcribed, but it has been summarized, and statements of the rogues has been paraphrased in order to provide limited searchability. Text has been put in gray to distinguish it from a transcription.
0:45 This is their ten year anniversary event
Interview with George Hrab (2:45)
(George Hrab appears, the first guest on their show tonight.)
4:30 – GH: If they make a movie of the SGU, who plays you guys? S: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor E: Simon Pegg B: (Oh my god! That Groucho Marx mustache!) Jonny Depp J: Christian Bale, Dom Delouise would play Perry, or Robbie Coltrain 7:00 - Dwaine Johnson could be George Hrab 7:30 – Discussing the Stephen Hawking Movie
What view would you like to have out your window? (8:20)
J: A view of the galaxy like in Star Wars Episode 5 S: A view of the Meditteranean Sea rapidly filling E: A Moonrise at the time when it was fifteen times larger in the sky B: A view of what the Earth looked like four billion years ago S: A view of the dinosaur era GH: Grand Canyon, the crucifixion, the glow-worm cave J: The Bobalie Gardens in Fiorna Italy
Eliminating one pet peeve (12:30)
GH: If you could eliminate one of your pet peeves, what would you get rid of. Things that you wish you could just not notice any more. B: Confusing your and you're GH: Misspellings J: People staring at their phones S: People driving slowly in traffic B: Stress from multiple deadlines approaching GH and S: Their inability to learn how to spell some words J: Putting USB keys in the wrong way GH: Turning the fan on in the bathroom instead of the light S: The next USB connection will be reversible, don't worry.
Slapping Therapy: (17:47)
S: News item: A massive injury from slapping therapy, a form of traditional Chinese medicine. The parents of a boy with diabetes was taken to this therapy. The kid died. They don't know for sure what the cause of death is. J: It's bad that we have to teach people that pain is bad. S: We do tell patients that there will be some pain in their treatments. 23:40 – B: We are infested with lady bugs 24:10 – The number of dots on lady bugs don't represent how old they are. S: Ladybugs are one of the only nice-looking bugs B: It's not segmented E: It's round and colorful J: They taste pretty good. E: They're bad at clearing their dead away
Reading the mind of someone famous (25:20)
25:20 – GH: If you could read the mind of someone famous? Who would you read? B: The President of the United States S: Vladamir Putin J: My two year old son's mind B: Your dog, or a porpoise, or a monkey 28:00 - J: Humans and dogs evolved together, and dogs affected our evolution 28:45 – Listener: I superglued a lentil onto my USB so it would always be the right way up GH: I would read Dr. Oz J: I think Dr. Oz knows exactly what he's doing S: It doesn't matter. Whether they are cutting corners, or a con, it doesn't matter. J: It's an epic paycheck B: Oprah booted his radio show from her network. He's taking a big hit this month J: What was his response to losing his medical license? B: Ad hominem attacks. S: They didn't take his license. They suggested he be booted from his university. The university said it was first amendment rights. 32:40 – B: Who's writing for Oliver? He keeps nailing it. S: John Oliver is hitting it out of the park. GH: It's good that it's not just a clone of the Daily Show B: He does one big topic 33:45 - J: I've heard how you fell into the skeptical community. Did you consider yourself before this happened? GH: In college, I read why people believe weird things. I read it because of a blurb at the back from Penn and Teller. It clicked more strongly eight years ago. Podcasts are like an audio magazine. E: We were using Skype for our games in 2004. S: Derek of Skepticality just interviewed me. J: Derek was doing podcasting before it was called podcasting GH: I just kept trying things and gradually got into podcasting. J: It changed your life. Same with us. We were always skeptical activists. But the podcast changed our lives. E: We realized early on how great it would be for outreach. GH: How long did it take to get to 100,000?
SGU's Historical Listenership: (39:20)
S: Let me show you. ''(Shows graph of steadily increasing listenership from 2005 to 2015. It's a very smooth increase that has reached more than sixty million.)'' S: By the way, the Skeptilair is run by the artificially intelligent SAL 9000, so you may occasionally hear me give instructions to SAL. J: So what are we looking at? S: This is a graphic of SGU listeners per year. There's no one way to calculate your audience. Downloads per week are not accurate. Unique downloads per episode are what we are counting here. B: Before the show, we had a newsletter with three hundred people. Then we jumped to a thousand with the show. S: Now we're around 160,000 to 170,000 episodes per week. All time, SGU episodes have been downloaded sixty million times. 42:40 – S: The rotating globe on the screen now shows where our listeners are from B: Pull up the Moon! Let's see if anyone is listening on the Moon. GH: What was your plan when you started? S: We were looking for a way to generate a lot of content and move online as much as possible. We did the newsletter for eight or nine years. J: But we didn't know what we were doing S: Two times Perry and I wrote a radio show. We thought we could handle it. It's easier. Then our friend Shane said, “Have you heard of podcasting?” We should just record our political talks. I thought that was a great idea, except we're going to talk about skepticism, and you won't be involved. We took our notes from our failed attempts, and the timing was perfect. We were playing City of Heroes, and the game just fell apart. 46:30 – They talk about City of Heroes S: Best character design of any games ever E: The graphics were wonderful B: I loved how you could move around. You could choose to fly. I would go to the tallest building an look around. S: We stopped playing the game on Wednesday night, and recorded a podcast instead E: I created a character that looked like Jesus. I named him Jesus F. Christ. S: This was a way of cranking out weekly content. Then it took on a life of its own. GH: Most successful things go that way. E: It was easy for us because we had so much material. J: The original 24 hour show had lots of technical difficulties. So let us know if there are any problems. S: What we're doing here is really hard. Using a webcam is easy. But being able to switch camera and bring in Skype is very complicated. We've got lots of help, and it has still be hard. Last night at 11:00, we had a converter that was supposed to make things easier. It was completely incomprehensible. The equipment is not meant for a consumer. The user manual is written for professionals. We did eventually get everything working, but it was a struggle right until the very last. J: During the 24 hour show, our internet provider was throttling us back. We couldn't hear the people over Skype. We didn't know how technologically challenging it would be. S: It was almost an utter failure. This time, me and Jay really made sure it would all really work. This event allowed us to create a studio that we will use for other projects. J: We're thinking of doing a live show quarterly. The camera right in front of us is worth $30,000.
Interview with Eugenie Scott: 57:40
''(For some reason, the rogues are appearing in a mirror image during this interview)'' S: Let's talk about Kitzmiller to start with, because that happened near the beginning of our podcast. Tell us your full title. ES (Eugenie Scott): I was the former Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, and current President of the area Skeptics.