SGU Episode 873

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SGU Episode 873
April 2nd 2022
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 872                      SGU 874
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Guest
AJR: Andrea Jones-Rooy, political, social, and data scientist and professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the NYU Center for Data Science
Quote of the Week
I beg of you, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily "supernatural" or the work of "spirits" just because you cannot explain them.
Harry Houdini, Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, stunt performer
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Live from NYC

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. (applause) Today is March 25^th, 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. (applause) Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody! (applause)

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy. (applause)

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys. (applause)

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Hello New York! (applause)

S: And we have a special guest Andrea Jones-Rooy. Andrea, welcome to the SGU. (applause)

AJR: Hello. Thank you for having me.

S: You've been on the show before.

AJR: I've been on the live stream.

S: The live stream.

AJR: I've never done a, I've never done a SGU.

E: Not on SGU.

S: You're first time the guest rogue. A virgin. Yeah. (Cara laughs)

AJR: So, we'll see. I'll just just wink and I'll leave whenever [inaudible] (Cara laughs)

E: Not before science or fiction.

AJR: Yep.

S: Andrea you are a political scientist and a data specialist.

AJR: Yes.

S: That is accurate?

AJR: Political scientist and data scientist.

S: Data scientist.

AJR: Yeah. I don't just specialize. I science. (Cara laughs)

S: Okay.

J: It that two PhDs?

AJR: Yes.

S: Is that two separate PhDs?

AJR: It's one PhD and a rebranding, is what it is. (Cara laughs) Yeah. So I have a PhD in political science and then all the students in the entire world wanted to study data science and I said "yeah, I teach data science". And so now I'm a data scientist.

C: That's what you can do when you have a PhD, people don't seems to know.

AJR: Exactly, exactly, Cara you're ready you can, you can change it all around. So I did do quantitative political science. And so I was doing statistics and now I just said yeah, I can look at other numbers, they don't have to be about politics. That's where I am now, yeah. And I did the programming side of analysis in political science so it was sort of related.

B: What kind of program.

AJR: I started in R and now I'm in Python, what do you think about that?

B: I've heard of Python, I've never heard of R. Is that like a pirate language? Arrrr.

AJR: Yes, yeah. Well there's a hilarious statistics joke, I don't know, I'm sorry a programming joke, are you ready?

B: Please please yes.

AJR: So the joke is: what is a pirate's favorite programming language?

C: Arrrr.

AJR: Stata. (Cara and Evan laughs) And we like it because it makes someone say arrr and you're hilarious. (laughter) So we had fun in grad school. I have a, I have an actual statistics joke if you want to hear it. I'll stop. Is this why you want to go?

J: Go ahead.

AJR: Do you know the three statisticians who go hunting?

J: No.

AJR: No? You know this?

S: I think I've heard this.

AJR: Okay, so three statisticians go hunting. Don't say if you know what it is, right, they go hunting. One of the statisticians shoots at the duck and hits 10 feet in front of it. Another one statistician shoots at the duck and hits 10 feet behind it. And the third statistician says "you got it!". (laughter)

C: I like it.

AJR: And those were the two times we laughed in grad school. (laughter)

S: I had a doctor duck hunting joke.

AJR: Oh let's hear it.

S: So there was a family practitioner, neurologist and a surgeon go duck hunting.

AJR: Perfect.

S: Right? So they're waiting for the [inaudible] for the ducks to come. A flock of ducks flies by. The family doctor says "There, oh duck, wait do you think it's a duck? What about you? Do you think those are ducks?". By the time he was done getting consultations they had, they had flown by. Then another five minutes go by, another flock of ducks come by and now it's the neurologist's turn to shoot he aims his gun "It's a duck! Wait that could be a goose. Or it could be a, you know, a swallowed tail but before he would caught up, you know, figured out exactly what the species was, they were gone. Then a few minutes later another more ducks come by now it's the surgeon's turn. As soon as they come into view he raises his gun blam blam empties both barrels. Grabs the other guy's gun, there's birds falling all over the place. Then he turns to, actually, there's supposed to be a pathologist there as well (Cara laughs), turns to the pathologist and says: "Go make sure those were ducks".

C: Yeah, there you go.

E&B: Ooh.

AJR: Yeah, that's good. All right, I have one for being stranded on a desert island. And it's, what is it, it's a physicist, a chemist and an economist, okay? Does anyone know this one? You might know that, in the front you know this one, okay. So let me see if I get this right. So they're stranded on a desert island. Everyone is starving. It's a physicist, chemist and economist. And a political scientist my PhD's in political science so we added ourselves to the joke, right? It's the kind of entrepreneurial spirit we have. They're stuck on a desert island. All there is is one can of food and no can opener. So they say: "How we're gonna open this?". And the physicist says: "Well, we could set up some kind of lever and then have it catapult against the thing and then crack it open and blah blah blah.". The chemist says: "Well we could apply heat", I don't come from the natural sciences, so I don't know it might work, "We could apply some heat and crack it home and it would expand". And the economist says: "Assume there's a can opener.". And then the political scientist says: "Assume the economist is right.".

C: There you go.

AJR: But if you're a political scientist that's uproariously hilarious. (laughter)

Special Report: Political Science of War (4:36)

• James D. Fearon: "Rationalist Explanations for War"

S: So Andrea we were chatting before the show and you said that a paper came out recently which completely changed your entire field. So let's, let's hear about it. Well I first won a challenge recently, because maybe I misled you. It came out in 1995. (Cara laughs)

S: You didn't mention that.

AJR: I didn't mention that. In the scheme of knowledge is very recent.

C: When people cite papers now, that I'm editing a book, right now and I'm seeing like citations from the 90s and they'll say things about things and I'm like no, that doesn't fly, I need something a little more reasonable. A lot has changed since 1995.

S: It depends on your field.

C: True.

AJR: But this was a revolutionary field, or a revolutionary paper that spawned research that's going on to this day. And so the paper is "Rationalist Explanations for War by James D. Fearon, who's a political scientist at Stanford. You can look it up, I checked ahead of time, there's no paywall, you can look, free PDF. It's an amazing paper. And he said in 1995: "The main puzzle with war is that it's costly but it nonetheless recurs". So war is─

S: Recur or reoccur?

AJR: I think he says recur.

C: It does recur, it does not reoccur. Actually it probably reoccurs and also recurs, yeah. I think recur is more specific than reoccur.

AJR: Right. I think so. Right. And the idea is that wars are exposed inefficient. So exposed inefficient, meaning once we get to the end of a war, and there's a reason, this is on my mind and I'm sure you're all imagining what that reason is these days. After the war, you're gonna get to some settlement, wars end and some settlements sorted out. But we've all paid the cost. Big capital C of what that war was. So why can't rational actors figure out their problems and not incur that huge cost C and just get to that settlement without all the violence. Like literally without all the stuff going on in Russia and Ukraine. And a lot of researchers until 1995 said well the explanation is, I'm oversimplifying, but the explanation is egos, irrationality, crazy people. And that may be the explanation, right? But this person said, James Fearon said, what if we could mathematically figure out a rational reason to incur this capital cost C. If we could figure that out, then maybe we could do things to prevent or shorten wars. So I've been thinking about Fearon's paper and that spawned a whole revolution in the field where we started using math and assuming economists were right to understand and predict war. So it's a huge landmark paper. The three reasons that a rational actor would choose were, by rational I only mean, I think I'm giving a lecture, sorry everyone. By rational I only mean you're doing what's best for you, you don't have to get too wound up on the definition, right? Three reasons. One - incentives to misrepresent private information. So my private information if I'm Russia or I'm Ukraine is how far I'm willing to go to fight for this thing and how much power I actually have. Both sides have incentives to act like they are stronger than they are, and so you're going to escalate to a point of no return. There's some brinkmanship and shelling if you know that game theory as well. And so the idea is you escalate, escalate, escalate and incur something called audience costs where everyone else is watching, and you can't back down, and so you're better off going to war in incurring this C than saying "oh just kidding" and this was, you know, the Iraq invasion and George W Bush, like, that was very big, you know, a very strong example of this particular mechanism.

The second is commitment problems. I can't commit to not fighting you because there's no world government. And I can't commit that if we get to a settlement where we say well this is where Ukraine ends and this is where Russia. The paper wasn't about Russia and Ukraine but it'd be amazing if it were, right? We can't commit to not fighting tomorrow, so it never goes away.

And the third is one, that this this researcher said it might not be a real problem because there are creative solutions around it, is issue indivisibility. Which is it's just an issue you cannot come to an agreement on, so you think like Israel-Palestine or you practically can't divide it up, because it's on the same land. Oor you're disputing, you think of all the territorial disputes around the world like that could be it. Political scientists like to think well in practice, we could figure it out. You could have this territory on weekends and holidays, and you could have this territory and it's like, but in reality there's political reasons you couldn't get to those.

So those are the three big reasons for war. And one thing the political scientists like to do is watch every war and see which of those three things explains what's going on. It's a very grim pastime, and we're not very fun people to hang around, right?

B: Did they watch a news and eat popcorn?

AJR: Yeah exactly. We say incentives to misrepresent private information, yeah, that's it, we bet it's all very fun. The thing with Ukraine and Russia is that I don't think either three of those apply. Maybe issue indivisibility. But what's so jarring, one of the many things that's so jarring about Ukraine-Russia is that you, most of our models of war, since 1995 have assumed two sides that participate in this escalation. And it's so rare to see the cases where one side is like, I'm not escalating, I'm not going to fight, don't come fight, and then you see this huge escalation. Now there's fighting of course. But so I actually don't know and I've been wondering what James Fearon would say about these huge asymmetric wars.

J: I think you said it though, I mean this one is actually driven by ego.

AJR: I mean that's the thing and, so I'm like is Fearon wrong? This is my whole, you know, religion this past 30 years.

C: But did he even consult a psychologist when he wrote that paper? I mean that's the thing, like to, I get to say like maybe we can't say it's as simple as irrationality. But to say let's take irrationality out of the algorithm altogether seems short-sighted.

AJR: So he's not arguing that it's not irrationality.

C: Okay.

AJR: He's saying if if it's if we have two rational actors, why would it still be rational for them to go to war.

C: Right but in in many cases we don't have two rational actors. And I think that's also part of the problem with Ukraine-Russia.

AJR: Well one of the frustrating things with political science and the world is that we, all the leaders that we are concerned about, Xi Jinping, you know, North Korea, every country that we're nervous about we debate are they rational actors, are they not rational actors. Trump - is he rational, is he not. What is rational, doing things in his own, how do you define that? And so we kind of get lost in circles, and this was why this paper was cool, was because we were like given that the argument, well they're crazy, it doesn't help us better understand.

C: Right, because they still are going to act in the interest of whatever their crazy algorithm is. And so understanding that is important. But rational versus irrational is sort of a construct that you're never going to be able to come to an agreement on.

AJR: Exactly.

C Is there pathology, is there not pathology.

AJR: Right, though I will read all those papers from psychologists, who are like, I shouldn't do this but I'm gonna analyze this later from afar (Cara laughs).

C: Yeah, go for it yeah, yeah.

S: So it's my understanding is, I mean I think the indivisible thing does sound right here, and if, tell me if you agree with this analysis, that Putin thinks that there is no Ukraine. Ukraine thinks there is a Ukraine. And that's an unresolvable difference.

AJR: Right, right.

S: And and I think you know Putin, from everything I'm reading about, is staking his entire country and political future on this notion that he can just absorb Ukraine because it doesn't actually exist or whatever.

C: But it's not that he thinks it doesn't exist, he thinks that in his moral universe he gets to own it. [inaudible] But that's what all of the coverage that I've seen. It's like it, it's historical, it's based on how he came up and developed his leadership. And he misses mother Russia desperately and wants to be that leader again.

S: Yeah but these two things are not mutually exclusive.

C: True, true.

S: So everything you're saying is correct, but, but I'm also reading, you know, from people who like wrote the book on psychology, that, you know, he really, there's this mythology now. Whether he believes it or not is anyone's guess. But the mythology is that Ukraine does not have any existence apart from Russia. It is Russia, right?

C: But he sees that they have a president.

S: No but that's not legitimate, it's just, it's just not legitimate.

C: Yeah he sees it all as not legitimate, not that it doesn't actually exist.

AJR: And we see examples of that elsewhere around the world as well.

E: Oh yeah.

AJR: Countries claim to be autonomous. And many people think they are. And other countries say I don't think so. You know, you can have your president, that's very cute but you're not actually that country.

E: Taiwan.

C: Western Sahara, yeah.

S: I've read previously, and not a political scientist, don't know, but my late understanding was most wars are about resources. Is that still pretty much true or is?

AJR: It depends because resources as well is one of those things, where it's like, well how do you define resources, right? Usually we think natural resources and we're talking oil and this and that. And you can pin a lot of conflicts as I think through the ones that I'm aware of, it's like, yeah resources. But resources could also be human capital, it could be, I don't know what enough about the natural resources of Ukraine, I would imagine that there's more to it. The mythology around Putin is, it's not, if Putin was just trying to maximize natural resources, I don't know that Ukraine is where I would go, sorry.

J: Actually Ukraine is resource rich.

S: They're like the bread basket of Europe and you know without Ukraine Russia is a lot poorer. And so there would be a huge gain for Russia if they did absorb Ukraine.

AJR: That's true.

J: As an example Ukraine produces 75% of the of neon in the world. And you can't make CPUs without neon.

AJR: Look at us not supporting Ukraine or supporting Ukraine by running computers.

C: Couldn't you make a make a distinction though between geopolitical conflict or like war, straight up war geopolitical conflict, whether it be over ideology or over, you know, these these these three descriptions. And the very specific situations in which there's like an imperialist attitude, right? Because that's a different situation where one group wants to take ownership of one another's land. And that is the, that is what promoted war a lot historically. But I think you should, we have to look at those wars differently than we we look at conflicts between two nations where they have no intention of rewriting their boundaries. Or of sort of occupying or taking ownership. Like that's a different kind of a war.

AJR: Well I'm glad you brought that up for two reasons. One is that I think something, you're hitting on something that political science, to my knowledge, has not studied as much as they should. Which is, what are we fighting over in the first place.

C: Right. Like that does matter.

AJR: Right. We often assume in our models like, given a fight, how do we, what causes two countries that are in a dispute to go to war or not go to war. And most countries that are in disputes do not use violence against one another, right? The second thing that I love that you brought up about this is that measurement is one of my favorite fields or subfields, or techniques of all time which is, how do you even define and measure what a war is, right? Does it count as a war if you're like, I don't know, a whole bunch of people die and you're fighting over something. But is that 100 people, is it 50 people, is it, do they have to be civilians like it gets very grim.

S: It's 50.

AJR: It's 50?

C: Is a drone, is a coordinated drone strike a war.

S: Are economic sanctions an act of war?

AJR: Right, exactly. And, I think to to both of your point, I mean are we fighting over the land Ukraine, are we fighting over the physical resource or are we fighting over the idea. And I think the fact that it's a physical movement, I mean seeing, you know, in the New York Times you see these red arrows that just look so 100 years ago, right? Seeing the physical takeover of land feels like war in the sense. And maybe this is some American bias that I have, sending drones to fight an idea is super bad. But not a war in the same kind of sense that is causing us to freak out. I'm coming around Steve, I think that it's hard to think of any war where I would believe that there weren't resources under the hood, right?

C: But again, resources can be human capital, it can be land, it can be all of those things.

AJR: Right. The only other thing I'm going back to to fear on, because you know, he needs someone to defend his ideas. But, you know, these Stanford professors, no one's sticking up for them. (Cara laughs) Thank goodness I'm here, right? Is maybe Putin is playing a game of escalation not against Ukraine but the rest of the world.

C: Yeah.

AJR: Right? NATO, US, other powers, China, not the China, you know they're trying to get China on their side. But that might be what they're doing. They know Ukraine isn't going to fight back though they're fighting back more than they expected. But is Biden going to do something, that's the escalation that maybe he's playing.

J I question that because the one thing that I felt like all the analysts were sure was, that Putin did not want NATO to do what NATO did over the last month. NATO, the NATO nations really became arm and arm nations with each other. And it flew in the face of what he wanted. He was like trying to make it so he's suppressing NATO. And now NATO is an order of magnitude more powerful and resilient, you know?

C: But the worst possible thing that could have happened was that Ukraine went Euro and I think that's what really really, you know, exacerbated this.

J: What do you mean, they're wearing tight jeans?

C: Yes. All the things.

AJR: Even Eurovision and Santa Claus?

C: Funny thing is like, as silly as it sounds, that is part of it. Like their, their president wears blue jeans. Like he is very western in that way. And so all of these very kind of European and western influences from something that used to be the USSR. Like it's one thing if, if Ukraine was like this defunct, you know, old russian nation that sort of just was like languishing. But when they were, you know, talking about joining and when when sort of they started to get all this backing I think that scared Putin shitless. He does not want that, he does not want the world to go Euro. And that happened in his backyard.

J: Well Ukraine actually it was like doing better economically than Russia, right.

C: Of course, you don't want to be proven wrong when you're, you know, like it's really hard for some people to be wrong.

J: Yeah.

C: And sometimes instead of like going "okay, you're right", which is never going to happen with Putin, they're going to throw a temper tantrum.

S: Andrea how does, like just a gross miscalculation play into the rational actor thing? Because I think that's the one thing that everyone I've read on the Ukraine-Russia war says is that Putin totally miscalculated. Pretty much everything. His power. Ukraine's resistance. NATO's resilience. Pretty much across the board. And was he rational, given his assumptions and that the escalation was due to the fact that his assumptions were wrong?

AJR: Or yeah, or is he just─

C: Or is he a narcissist?

AJR: ─like he saw the math, was like I don't care, I'm gonna die soon anyway. And then so, we had a projector. There's a beautiful number line between for the two wars. So Russia-Ukraine and what their costs are, what they're willing to do. And there's all these different variables, and you hit on the main ones, which are like the things you could, you guess about, and you could get wrong. So the incentives to misrepresent, and this is where I think it happened less with Ukraine but maybe the other countries, is I want to make it look like I'm more willing to fight back. If anything Ukraine, Putin might have correctly thought that Ukraine wasn't willing. And then Ukraine surprised itself by being more willing. We don't actually know, there's a capital T true value for all of these variables. But we don't necessarily know what those are. Historically though these are the cases that we tend to observe because they're interesting. You think of US and Vietnam. We totally miscalculated how willing Vietnam was to fight. How able they were. So it's how willing are you to fight, it's what are your resources to fight. It's what's the match up of your resources versus our resources. And it's, that's where it kind of gets frustrating going back to the, the irrational, irrationality story because you can't know. And so the question is, given these variables, how do we either make it look like that Cost is going to be so big that Putin is incentivized to back down. Or how can we more transparently reveal how far everyone is willing to go to put an end to this. If we are. Right? And so so it's more about, how can we change the math as opposed to what he, because I don't know, what he thought. I don't know if his math was wrong or if it was right and he doesn't care, I don't know.

J: So I think, I think he well, he lives in a bubble, right?

AJR: That's the other thing.

J: That's the problem. He, I don't think he's actually hearing like hard reality.

C: And so how can you be a rational actor if...

J: If you're not getting real information. Another fair thing to say is, aren't we all surprised that Ukraine lasted this long? I thought it was going to be a two week thing.

C: Not just that they're lasting this long, that they're actually like they're taking things back now. Like they're, they're wearing Russia out.

J: Yeah. I wouldn't mess with Ukraine, I mean like, think about like, the like Russia's percep, you know, the world's perception of Russia I think is like it's massive, the army's huge, they have a ton, you know, like a ton of equipment and all this stuff. And then when we see it, it's like a clown show what they have going on in Ukraine. Like everybody miscalculated I think. Nobody said before this war Russia's gear is super old and their army is not [inaudible].

C: I think they kinda did, but they were like, but Ukraine has like not a lot to go back. I think it has always been kind of really.

J: I don't know, I didn't read any of that.

C: I think that's kind of the big kind of global joke is that Russia's a little like, you know, all their nuclear like, like they don't keep their nukes under lock and key and everything's like rusty and falling apart. I mean I think that's always kind of been everything's still cold war era.

AJR: I mean. I flew on Aeroflot in the early 2000s and I thought I was gonna to die, so...

C: Aeroflot?

AJR: Aeroflot.

C: I liked my Aeroflot.

AJR: Really?

C: Yeah, when I went to Kazakhstan. I thought it was kind of [inaudible]

AJR: Oh man all the stereotypes, like we took off and it's immediately bouncing. All the seats. The things don't latch shut at the top. And all the people, I'm not even exaggerating, all the people on the plane who were all like old Russian dudes, stood up and immediately started passing around vodka. Like as we're going.

C: That sounds horrible.

AJR: Is this a joke, am I being punked?

C: That is not how my flight went.

AJR: I had water in [inaudible] it was wild. So I'm assuming that's how they got to Ukraine, I don't know.

C: It's on Aeroflot.

AJR: But there is another line of research that's like okay, one thing we tend not to think about are the people on the ground, who are doing the fighting. We get so wound up with the leaders, that it's like well, who's doing the fighting, right, who are the the players on the ground. And in this case, what is Russia, what are the Russian soldiers fighting for.

C: Right.

AJR: Versus what are the Ukrainian people fighting for. And I would certainly imagine that they would fight a lot more if you're on the Ukrainian side.

E: You're yeah you're defending your it's a different strategies, absolutely.

AJR: You're playing two different games, right? You're doing what you're supposed to do.

C: But but but but again if we're working under legitimate, valid data and assumptions it's one thing. But if we're operating under the construct of the propaganda bubble that the Russian soldiers are fighting under it's different. So they they may be fighting for something that we fully don't understand because we haven't been living under that propaganda machine for as long as they have.

AJR: What I would love is a bit of survey research on the front lines for the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and then we'll know..

J: Well they have.

AJR: Think you're right because we don't know, we don't know what they think.

J: They have prisoners of war, I mean they could be asking those soldiers that they've captured, you know, what to do, I'm sure they are, I'm sure we just aren't getting the intel.

C: Yeah.

AJR: I mean are we so in the, I don't want to be politically biased, are we on Ukraine's side, what do we think?

C: Pretty, yeah.

J: I mean, you know.

AJR: I mean Putin has some interesting ideas (Cara laughs) Please don't use that [inaudible] out of context.

[talking over each other]

E: I mean it's pretty clear to me.

C: The longer you're in media the more you realize you can't make statements like that, that somebody can pull completely out of context and then air somewhere.

AJR: I'm gonna have to slip Steve a lot of money [inaudible].

B: You're clearly not a rational actor.

AJR: I'm just trying to misrepresent.

S: All right let's, let's move on to some news items, we have a few news items to get to.

C: Yes yes.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

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

S: All right. Let's move on to some news items. We have a few news items to get to.

Transgenic Plants and Space Travel (22:55)

• Transgenic Plants and Space Travel

S: We're going to start with one about transgenic plants in space.

Homeopathy Trials and Publication Bias (37:13)

• Reporting bias makes homeopathy trials look like homeopathy works

Anti-Universe (52:34)

• Our universe may have a twin that runs backward in time

Psychedelic Treatments (1:04:49)

• AI maps psychedelic ‘trip’ experiences to regions of the brain – opening new route to psychiatric treatments

Plastic in our Blood (1:21:00)

• The Guardian: Microplastics found in human blood for first time

Science or Fiction (1:30:55)

Theme: Ancillary skills of U.S. presidents Item #1: President Nixon was an accomplished musician who could play the piano, clarinet, violin, accordian, and saxophone. Item #2: President Lincoln was a champion wrestler, being almost undefeated and holding a regional title for several years. In 1992 he was inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame. Item #3: Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair, inspired by the long hours spent in drafting the Declaration of Independence.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Lincoln into Wrestling h.o.f.
Science	Nixon accomplished musician
Science	Jefferson's swivel chair

Host	Result
Steve	clever

Rogue	Guess
Andrea	Lincoln into Wrestling h.o.f.
Bob	Lincoln into Wrestling h.o.f.
Jay	Nixon accomplished musician
Cara	Jefferson's swivel chair
Evan	Lincoln into Wrestling h.o.f.

Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:41:35)

I beg of you, Sir Arthur, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily "supernatural" or the work of "spirits" just because you cannot explain them.
– Harry Houdini (1874-1926), in a 1922 letter to Arthur Conan Doyle after Doyle visited Houdini at his apartment in New York City to partake in a slate-writing session.

Signoff

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

S: Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. And, if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

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