SGU Episode 905
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| SGU Episode 905 |
|---|
| November 12th 2022 |
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From Ratcheting of climate pledges needed to limit peak global warming, |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
QUOTE |
AUTHOR, _short_description_ |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| Forum Discussion |
Introduction, remembering CSICOP editor Kendrick Frazier
Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
00:09.000 --> 00:13.000 Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.
00:13.000 --> 00:18.000 Today is Thursday, November 10th, 2022, and this is your host, Stephen Novella.
00:18.000 --> 00:20.000 Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
00:20.000 --> 00:21.000 Hey everybody.
00:21.000 --> 00:22.000 Kara Santamaria.
00:22.000 --> 00:23.000 Howdy.
00:23.000 --> 00:24.000 Jay Novella.
00:24.000 --> 00:25.000 Hey guys.
00:25.000 --> 00:26.000 And Evan Bernstein.
00:26.000 --> 00:27.000 Good evening, everyone.
00:27.000 --> 00:33.000 So Evan, you were recently at PsyCon, the CSI's annual conference.
00:33.000 --> 00:34.000 Isn't that right?
00:34.000 --> 00:35.000 Yes, I was.
00:35.000 --> 00:37.000 I wasn't there long.
00:37.000 --> 00:43.000 I happened to be in Las Vegas on the same weekend that my sister got married in Las
00:43.000 --> 00:44.000 Vegas.
00:44.000 --> 00:48.000 So you skipped the wedding and went to the conference?
00:48.000 --> 00:49.000 Almost.
00:49.000 --> 00:55.640 It was just across the street at the Hotel Flamingo where the CSI conference was happening,
00:55.640 --> 01:00.480 so I went over there for a few hours and saw some people, saw some faces I hadn't seen
01:00.480 --> 01:05.680 and oh my gosh, at least since the last time we were at CSI back in 2018 and even before
01:05.680 --> 01:06.680 that with some other people.
01:06.680 --> 01:07.680 Yeah, and the before time.
01:07.680 --> 01:08.680 Yeah, before the pandemic.
01:08.680 --> 01:09.680 And the before times.
01:09.680 --> 01:10.680 The pre.
01:10.680 --> 01:17.280 So in case anyone listening doesn't know, the CSI, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry,
01:17.280 --> 01:18.280 used to be Psycop.
01:18.280 --> 01:21.760 They're the biggest national skeptical organization.
01:21.760 --> 01:28.840 They've been around since, I think, the mid-70s, 75, 76.
01:28.840 --> 01:33.880 They publish the Skeptical Inquirer, which is an excellent skeptical magazine.
01:33.880 --> 01:39.960 I get it every month, so one of the few things I enjoy reading cover to cover.
01:39.960 --> 01:47.320 Unfortunately, the editor of the Skeptical Inquirer, Kendrick Frazier, who we all know,
01:47.320 --> 01:49.640 somebody we would see at the conferences.
01:49.640 --> 01:51.360 He died two days ago.
01:51.360 --> 01:53.600 He was 80 years old.
01:53.600 --> 01:54.600 So good run.
01:54.600 --> 01:55.680 Apparently, he was sick.
01:55.680 --> 01:56.680 People knew.
01:56.680 --> 01:57.680 It wasn't like a surprise.
01:57.680 --> 02:02.600 It was known that he was, you know, that he was sick and was going to die soon.
02:02.600 --> 02:06.120 I got out, I think, two days before he passed away.
02:06.120 --> 02:09.820 I got an email from CSI letting us know, you know, what was going on.
02:09.820 --> 02:13.640 So yeah, it's always sad for, you know, a fellow skeptic to pass and he was, you know,
02:13.640 --> 02:18.560 basically dedicated majority of his adult life to promoting science and skepticism,
02:18.560 --> 02:21.140 you know, through his work through CSI.
02:21.140 --> 02:27.240 When we first went to, well, at least my experience, my first time going up to their facility in
02:27.240 --> 02:35.440 Buffalo was back in 1997 with you guys, and that was when I first met Kendrick then.
02:35.440 --> 02:40.780 And he then, as you said, Steve, sort of was a fixture of all the conferences that had
02:40.780 --> 02:41.780 taken place.
02:41.780 --> 02:44.740 He was one of the familiar faces there.
02:44.740 --> 02:47.360 You always saw him at these skeptic conferences.
02:47.360 --> 02:51.120 Yeah, there's a lot of characters in the skeptical movement, you know what I mean?
02:51.120 --> 02:55.440 Like there's a lot of people you meet that have strong personalities.
02:55.440 --> 03:00.960 And Kendrick was just like, as you say, just a fixture, just a real professional, just
03:00.960 --> 03:03.640 always there, just doing his job, you know, getting it done.
03:03.640 --> 03:04.640 You know what I mean?
03:04.640 --> 03:06.440 He's also always a super nice guy.
03:06.440 --> 03:07.440 Absolutely.
03:07.440 --> 03:10.600 A very no drama kind of executive kind of person.
03:10.600 --> 03:12.160 Yeah, even keel.
03:12.160 --> 03:14.960 And a big Los Angeles Dodgers fan, if I recall.
03:14.960 --> 03:20.400 He was, I remember at the last conference I saw him, this was back in 2018 when we were
03:20.400 --> 03:25.800 in Las Vegas, at the conference he was there and he was wearing a Dodgers jersey.
03:25.800 --> 03:30.320 And he was very happy and proud talking about his Dodgers who were, I believe, in the World
03:30.320 --> 03:32.600 Series, had just gotten to the World Series that year.
03:32.600 --> 03:38.200 And he was making plans, OK, I have to be here for this talk and I have to give a talk
03:38.200 --> 03:41.320 here, but then I'm going to sneak away and go see the baseball game for a while and then
03:41.320 --> 03:43.220 I'll be back.
03:43.220 --> 03:47.400 So he was apparently a very big baseball fan and loved his Dodgers.
03:47.400 --> 03:51.000 He was the author or editor on 10 different books.
03:51.000 --> 03:53.400 And I didn't know this, he was a fellow of the AAAS.
03:53.400 --> 03:57.960 Is he a scientist or just a science writer?
03:57.960 --> 04:01.520 More of a science writer than a practicing scientist, but he has a science education,
04:01.520 --> 04:02.520 yeah.
Dumbest Thing of the Week (4:03)
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04:02.520 --> 04:06.920 All right, so we're going to move on with our news items, but Evan, you're going to
04:06.920 --> 04:09.720 start us off with a Dumbest Thing of the Week.
04:09.720 --> 04:11.120 Yeah, Dumbest Thing of the Week.
04:11.120 --> 04:12.400 Do you want me to sing the song?
04:12.400 --> 04:13.400 No, not really.
04:13.400 --> 04:15.960 Kara, do you want me to sing the song?
04:15.960 --> 04:21.200 I'm going to say no also, I'm going to get in trouble.
04:21.200 --> 04:27.680 Then you know what, I'll not sing it this week, but if a listener writes us and says
04:27.680 --> 04:32.160 next time they want to hear it, it's going to happen, but I'll spare you, I'll spare
04:32.160 --> 04:35.400 you the enjoyment of me singing that song this week.
04:35.400 --> 04:36.400 Dumbest Thing of the Week.
04:36.400 --> 04:41.600 All right, Norway's Prince Louise, she is quitting her royal duties, it was announced
04:41.600 --> 04:42.600 a few days ago.
04:42.600 --> 04:44.520 Oh, she wants to have a really good reason.
04:44.520 --> 04:45.600 Oh, absolutely.
04:45.600 --> 04:50.600 She's going to devote all of her time to her true passion in life, alternative medicine.
04:50.600 --> 04:51.600 Oh, boy.
04:51.600 --> 04:52.600 What?
04:52.600 --> 04:53.600 Oh, yeah.
04:53.600 --> 04:54.600 What does that mean?
04:54.600 --> 04:59.880 Well, I will explain, and you know the definition of alternative medicine is anything that is
04:59.880 --> 05:06.160 not medicine, just so we're clear about that, but this is essentially almost a follow-up
05:06.160 --> 05:11.640 news item to one that I had talked about back in June of this year concerning Princess Louise.
05:11.640 --> 05:18.360 If you remember that her fiancé announced, and his name is Shaman Durek, that he had
05:18.360 --> 05:22.680 become engaged to the princess, Princess Louise of Norway.
05:22.680 --> 05:30.320 Shaman Durek, a sixth-generation shaman, author of the best-selling book, best-seller book,
05:30.320 --> 05:36.520 Spirit Hacking, Shamanic Keys to Reclaim Your Personal Power, Transform Yourself, and
05:36.520 --> 05:37.720 Light Up the World.
05:37.720 --> 05:42.600 Yes, the book in which he claims many things, including that childhood cancer is caused
05:42.600 --> 05:45.000 by unhappiness.
05:45.000 --> 05:49.120 Perhaps that will ring a bell as to the last news item I spoke about in regards to him.
05:49.120 --> 05:51.200 Let's blame the kids for their own cancer.
05:51.200 --> 05:52.200 That's a good idea.
05:52.200 --> 05:58.640 Yeah, that's a wonderful, wonderful scientifically-based philosophy that he espouses.
05:58.640 --> 06:00.640 And there are other gems in that book.
06:00.640 --> 06:03.580 Yeah, and the book got pulled from publishers.
06:03.580 --> 06:08.000 Many publishers in Europe realized, oh, this is bad, it's coming out.
06:08.000 --> 06:10.080 And Norway also pulled the book.
06:10.080 --> 06:11.880 They said, nope, sorry, not here.
06:11.880 --> 06:13.960 I think in America it stayed on the shelf.
06:13.960 --> 06:18.440 We have apparently a higher tolerance for dangerous health claims here in America than
06:18.440 --> 06:21.660 they do in Europe when it comes to these things.
06:21.660 --> 06:27.480 But Shaman Durek, he helps his victims, I mean clients, tap into their personal power
06:27.480 --> 06:31.640 and this is his words, while unblocking negative patterns that prevent them from reaching their
06:31.640 --> 06:33.600 optimal human performance.
06:33.600 --> 06:35.760 Does it get more gobbledygook than that?
06:35.760 --> 06:37.080 No, it does not.
06:37.080 --> 06:39.680 Now clearly he's beloved in Norway, apparently, right?
06:39.680 --> 06:42.320 Oh wait, the Wikipedia page about him, let's see.
06:42.320 --> 06:46.240 He advocates several conspiracy theories and has been characterized by Norwegian media
06:46.240 --> 06:48.580 and other critics as a con man.
06:48.580 --> 06:52.960 His only book was described by critics as nonsense, garbage, and dirty talk, and the
06:52.960 --> 06:54.680 ravings of a lunatic.
06:54.680 --> 06:58.300 But you know, he's actually a misunderstood soul.
06:58.300 --> 07:03.040 He addresses his critics and naysayers by comparing himself to the likes of Albert Einstein
07:03.040 --> 07:08.440 and Thomas Edison, claiming that they too were geniuses and simply misunderstood.
07:08.440 --> 07:11.960 Where have we heard that before?
07:11.960 --> 07:15.840 Now if all that background wasn't enough, he has the full endorsement and friendship
07:15.840 --> 07:18.360 of Gwyneth Paltrow and the Goop Parade.
07:18.360 --> 07:21.040 So that, I think, sums him up pretty well.
07:21.040 --> 07:25.800 So yeah, they're engaged, Princess Louise and the Shaman.
07:25.800 --> 07:31.360 But in this latest update, which came courtesy of the BBC, among other news outlets that
07:31.360 --> 07:36.060 picked it up, she has relinquished her royal duties, yes, she's going to focus on her
07:36.060 --> 07:41.160 alternative medicine business with the showman, I mean the Shaman.
07:41.160 --> 07:45.800 And Princess Louise, here's what she says, she's aware of the importance of research
07:45.800 --> 07:51.580 based knowledge, but she believes alternative medicine can be an important supplement to
07:51.580 --> 07:54.240 help the conventional medical establishment.
07:54.240 --> 08:00.880 Yeah, just like putting a little bit of manure on your ice cream supplements it and makes
08:00.880 --> 08:02.160 it better.
08:02.160 --> 08:04.680 And yeah, so we hear that before all the time.
08:04.680 --> 08:10.240 Oh, here's what else she says, a warm hand, an acupuncture needle, a crystal, natural
08:10.240 --> 08:15.960 remedies, yoga, meditation, or therapeutic conversation can, I believe, help to make
08:15.960 --> 08:18.320 life better for many individuals.
08:18.320 --> 08:20.480 You see what the pseudoscientists do?
08:20.480 --> 08:25.120 They blend the crazy ideas, you know, the acupuncture, the crystals, those natural
08:25.120 --> 08:32.040 remedies, with the non-crazy ideas, you know, meditation, yoga, conversation with therapists.
08:32.040 --> 08:36.560 You know, they couch themselves as being sort of these moderates, almost rationals, instead
08:36.560 --> 08:41.900 of just emphasizing the outright quackery agenda that they have.
08:41.900 --> 08:47.820 And they blend the two, they mix the two, it's a deception, is what it is.
08:47.820 --> 08:52.440 She also says, I also believe that there are components of a good life in sound physical
08:52.440 --> 08:57.760 and mental health that may not be so easy to sum up in a research report.
08:57.760 --> 09:02.560 Translation, scientific research and analysis is lacking and therefore any of the blanks
09:02.560 --> 09:08.280 that science can't answer means the answer lies in unfounded beliefs and ideas that are
09:08.280 --> 09:10.400 untethered to reality.
09:10.400 --> 09:13.000 Or I could ignore science whenever I want.
09:13.000 --> 09:16.080 Instead, go with what your gut is telling you in a way.
09:16.080 --> 09:21.960 The princess, yes, she's controversial and has been so for many decades.
09:21.960 --> 09:28.760 She started a school, this was back in 2007, to help people get in touch with their angels.
09:28.760 --> 09:33.760 And not in a metaphoric way, to get in touch with their angels.
09:33.760 --> 09:37.360 Angels exist and you can communicate with them.
09:37.360 --> 09:39.800 And she's been doing this ever since she was a child.
09:39.800 --> 09:44.200 And she's brought it with her, now she's I think in her 50s, so well into adulthood.
09:44.200 --> 09:48.400 She and a friend opened that school together back in 2007, the school has since closed
09:48.400 --> 09:49.400 in 2018.
09:49.400 --> 09:55.140 It didn't quite go I think as planned and had financial problems, she had to sell one
09:55.140 --> 09:58.080 of her houses in order to pay off the debts and so forth.
09:58.080 --> 10:00.000 So that went down.
10:00.000 --> 10:05.900 But there were some exposés and some things written about the school and they actually
10:05.900 --> 10:11.480 went into the school to do some, well to observe what exactly was going on.
10:11.480 --> 10:16.120 And they took some video about what was going on inside the classrooms there.
10:16.120 --> 10:22.620 And here's what they said, it mostly showed the princess and her friend, the other teacher,
10:22.620 --> 10:27.720 they would meditate with clients, trying to summon the spiritual energy needed to recognize
10:27.720 --> 10:30.440 and communicate with angels.
10:30.440 --> 10:31.440 That's it.
10:31.440 --> 10:32.440 That's all they did.
10:32.440 --> 10:37.880 They sat, I don't know, a seance, for lack of a better term, I don't know how else
10:37.880 --> 10:40.080 to really compare that.
10:40.080 --> 10:46.400 But hey, for $1,500 a class or a course, a semester, I have no idea, probably six classes,
10:46.400 --> 10:49.140 $1,500, that's what you would get.
10:49.140 --> 10:55.640 And yeah, you would use these angels to empower yourself and create miracles in your own life.
10:55.640 --> 10:59.600 These are all quotes right from their website, right from their literature.
10:59.600 --> 11:02.960 What is her business going to be, nobody really knows, time will tell.
11:02.960 --> 11:07.600 But based on her history and the history of her fiancé and the company that she keeps
11:07.600 --> 11:11.640 and the fact that her own family effectively cast her out because she's unpopular and
11:11.640 --> 11:17.540 detached from reality, I think we can safely assume that her foray into full-time pseudoscience
11:17.540 --> 11:21.440 will be, what, to be continued.
11:21.440 --> 11:22.440 We will find out.
11:22.440 --> 11:25.400 So this is, I have two minds on this story.
11:25.400 --> 11:30.880 One is that, you know, it always makes me sad to think of people dedicating their life
11:30.880 --> 11:31.880 to nonsense.
11:31.880 --> 11:32.880 You know what I mean?
11:32.880 --> 11:39.920 It's like, they're going to put so much time and energy into a fantasy that they think
11:39.920 --> 11:44.960 is real because they have bought into it, and it's just such a waste.
11:44.960 --> 11:50.220 But also, she seems to have been into this since she was a child, right, so this just
11:50.220 --> 11:54.320 may be her predisposition rather than being seduced by it.
11:54.320 --> 11:57.480 She sounds like she's like all in from the beginning.
11:57.480 --> 12:03.040 And she's made a choice here, Steve, a choice that so few people in life have, especially
12:03.040 --> 12:10.000 with someone of her exposure, her power, the wealth and the exposure that comes along with
12:10.000 --> 12:15.600 being part of a royal family and the good work that you could potentially be doing.
12:15.600 --> 12:20.940 And you're shunting that, you're throwing that away and that possibility in order to
12:20.940 --> 12:24.360 go down this specific route in life.
12:24.360 --> 12:25.360 That makes it worse.
12:25.360 --> 12:27.600 All right, thanks, Evan.
12:27.600 --> 12:28.600 There you go.
News Items
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Climate Change in the Classroom (12:29)
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12:28.600 --> 12:35.000 We have a couple of climate-related news items this week, partly because, you know, it's
12:35.000 --> 12:40.760 COP 27, it's the big climate get-together, UN meeting in Egypt this year.
12:40.760 --> 12:44.900 And of course, there are the usual people whining about all of the attendees taking
12:44.900 --> 12:48.780 private jets there, which, you know, is a distraction.
12:48.780 --> 12:53.440 But there's a few things we could talk about, but Jay, you're going to start us off by
12:53.440 --> 12:57.920 talking about how climate change is taught in the classroom.
12:57.920 --> 13:04.320 In the past few years, the science and education standards in Texas were reviewed and updated.
13:04.320 --> 13:10.520 So these education standards, they outline what the students in each grade and each subject
13:10.520 --> 13:11.520 should learn.
13:11.520 --> 13:12.520 Right.
13:12.520 --> 13:17.200 This is like literally what are the children going to learn and in what grade are they?
13:17.200 --> 13:22.040 This was the first review of the education standards that proposed students learn about
13:22.040 --> 13:23.880 human-caused climate change.
13:23.880 --> 13:24.880 Imagine that.
13:24.880 --> 13:29.520 This is the first review period that they're actually going to put the question out there.
13:29.520 --> 13:31.680 Should we teach our kids about climate change?
13:31.680 --> 13:34.560 This seems like they're already behind the ball here.
13:34.560 --> 13:37.440 Texas happens to be a key player in this situation.
13:37.440 --> 13:39.120 So let me give you the background here.
13:39.120 --> 13:44.320 Since Texas is one of the biggest single textbook purchasers, when they decide what should and
13:44.320 --> 13:48.880 should not be taught to their students, the companies that make textbooks, you know, they
13:48.880 --> 13:52.160 commonly change their products to fit what Texas wants.
13:52.160 --> 13:54.680 That's how much buying power Texas has.
13:54.680 --> 13:58.400 Then those books get sold all across the United States.
13:58.400 --> 14:03.520 In a 2020 review of science standards of all 50 states in the US, when looking at how well
14:03.520 --> 14:09.200 climate change was represented in their curriculum, most states got an A or B. Texas got an F.
14:09.200 --> 14:16.160 In 2019, NPR did a poll where four out of five people in the United States think that
14:16.160 --> 14:19.180 school children should be educated about climate change.
14:19.180 --> 14:22.480 So clearly, you know, these two things don't line up.
14:22.480 --> 14:27.840 The last time the Texas board reviewed and updated the Texas essential knowledge and
14:27.840 --> 14:33.920 skills, this is called TEKS, this was in regards to science.
14:33.920 --> 14:35.560 This happened back in 2009.
14:35.560 --> 14:39.640 Now, during that cycle of review, the board argued about evolution.
14:39.640 --> 14:43.320 They were really trying to figure out like how they want to present evolution to the
14:43.320 --> 14:45.240 children in Texas.
14:45.240 --> 14:49.520 And they also decided that high school students should hear both sides of the argument about
14:49.520 --> 14:52.360 whether or not global warming is happening.
14:52.360 --> 14:54.480 This was in 2009.
14:54.480 --> 15:00.440 Back in 2019, when it was again time to review and update the Texas essential knowledge and
15:00.440 --> 15:06.840 skills, the heavily debated topic at this point was finally climate science.
15:06.840 --> 15:09.640 This was the number one thing that was being debated.
15:09.640 --> 15:12.220 The board had three different curricula to consider.
15:12.220 --> 15:18.080 So they had high school core sciences, high school elective sciences, and then K-8, which
15:18.080 --> 15:20.200 is all the other grades.
15:20.200 --> 15:25.200 The board brought in 85 volunteers and some of them, you know, they were professionals.
15:25.200 --> 15:30.120 They were content advisors who could give the board suggestions on what should be changed.
15:30.120 --> 15:35.160 And those who worked on the high school core science standards initially did not include
15:35.160 --> 15:39.920 any reference to the science of modern climate change, remarkably.
15:39.920 --> 15:44.600 During the process of deciding on what will end up in the curriculum, the board had a
15:44.600 --> 15:45.600 public meeting, right?
15:45.600 --> 15:48.840 They, you know, they opened it up and they let everybody and anybody who wants to comment
15:48.840 --> 15:51.000 about it chime in.
15:51.000 --> 15:57.300 And 30 people raised the topic of how climate change should be included in these core classes.
15:57.300 --> 16:02.080 This came from parents and teachers and other people involved in education.
16:02.080 --> 16:06.360 So also in that same meeting, a man named Robert Unger gave his opinion.
16:06.360 --> 16:10.000 He, however, was a representative for the Texas Energy Council.
16:10.000 --> 16:11.520 Guess where this is going?
16:11.520 --> 16:15.460 He's an engineer from Dallas and he, oh, you know, just happened to be someone who worked
16:15.460 --> 16:19.000 for the oil and gas industry for over 45 years.
16:19.000 --> 16:24.640 So that you have a clear understanding of who this man was representing.
16:24.640 --> 16:31.200 He was representing the Texas Energy Council and that is a league of 35 oil and gas industry
16:31.200 --> 16:32.560 organizations.
16:32.560 --> 16:34.600 They have over 5,000 members.
16:34.600 --> 16:39.920 The Texas Energy Council had recruited 17 experts with varying backgrounds.
16:39.920 --> 16:44.520 And all of these people agreed that oil and gas should be portrayed in a balanced way.
16:44.520 --> 16:46.920 I don't know what the hell that means.
16:46.920 --> 16:48.620 You know, they just want it to be vague.
16:48.620 --> 16:53.840 This is a nice way of saying the way I read it, that they don't want oil and gas industries
16:53.840 --> 16:59.180 to be represented in a negative light due to their direct involvement in climate change.
16:59.180 --> 17:05.760 So their goal, this is taken from their, essentially taken from their website when you read between
17:05.760 --> 17:06.760 the lines.
17:06.760 --> 17:11.220 Their goal is to downplay the seriousness of climate change, to pass on the blame to
17:11.220 --> 17:19.320 other industries and countries, and most reprehensibly, and to delay actions that would mitigate climate
17:19.320 --> 17:20.320 change.
17:20.320 --> 17:21.320 How about that?
17:21.320 --> 17:22.620 That's what these people are about.
17:22.620 --> 17:27.760 So Unger suggested to the board that they remove any mention of social justice and ethics
17:27.760 --> 17:29.880 in these science classes.
17:29.880 --> 17:33.680 He proposed that they include a cost-benefit analysis.
17:33.680 --> 17:35.520 This is what, this is the way that he wanted this.
17:35.520 --> 17:36.520 Oh yeah?
17:36.520 --> 17:37.520 Yeah.
17:37.520 --> 17:38.520 Wait, wait until I read this.
17:38.520 --> 17:39.520 Yeah, let's go down that road.
17:39.520 --> 17:40.520 I mean.
17:40.520 --> 17:44.540 I know this is not going to end well for him if we do a cost-benefit analysis.
17:44.540 --> 17:50.160 So he goes on to explain how solar and wind also have negative aspects and that all energy
17:50.160 --> 17:54.560 sources should be looked at from a cost-benefit perspective.
17:54.560 --> 17:56.860 This of course is goddamn absurd, right?
17:56.860 --> 17:58.800 It's a false equivalence.
17:58.800 --> 18:02.800 Wind and solar produce a fraction of the greenhouse gases that gas and oil do.
18:02.800 --> 18:04.600 I mean, a fraction.
18:04.600 --> 18:08.680 Comparing negative aspects of oil, gas, wind, and solar is a complete waste of time.
18:08.680 --> 18:13.200 And it most certainly is not the conversation and not what we want students focusing on.
18:13.200 --> 18:16.760 Oh, let's do a cost analysis of these different sources of energy.
18:16.760 --> 18:17.760 Yeah, sure.
18:17.760 --> 18:21.280 Well, Jay, I'll push back on that, let me push back on that.
18:21.280 --> 18:25.800 I think that's fine as long as you do it accurately, right?
18:25.800 --> 18:32.880 If you did a full cost-benefit analysis, including the externalized costs of climate change.
18:32.880 --> 18:33.880 That's the key.
18:33.880 --> 18:40.040 Wind and solar come out way on top, you know, as well as, you know, geothermal, hydroelectric
18:40.040 --> 18:43.480 and nuclear, anything that's low carbon.
18:43.480 --> 18:49.040 And the massive carbon-emitting energies are, you know, just because of health care costs
18:49.040 --> 18:50.520 on the one side and the other.
18:50.520 --> 18:54.000 Steve, you're talking, but you're going into detail that they don't want and that they've
18:54.000 --> 18:57.120 clearly represented that they don't want those kinds of details.
18:57.120 --> 19:02.640 They don't want them to, they don't want the students to be talking about explicitly understanding
19:02.640 --> 19:03.840 what the root cause is.
19:03.840 --> 19:05.960 They want, this is their whitewash.
19:05.960 --> 19:07.400 Oh, I know.
19:07.400 --> 19:12.100 But you can call them out, rather than saying, we don't want to talk cost versus cost-benefit
19:12.100 --> 19:15.680 analysis, you say, all right, we'll do, here's the cost-benefit analysis.
19:15.680 --> 19:17.600 I mean, these things have been published.
19:17.600 --> 19:21.720 Yeah, but I'm sure that they have a handy-dandy curriculum for that.
19:21.720 --> 19:22.720 Yeah.
19:22.720 --> 19:23.720 Well, that's the problem.
19:23.720 --> 19:26.880 You can't let the industry write the science curriculum.
19:26.880 --> 19:32.000 How about we just talk about the actual facts as scientists understand that?
19:32.000 --> 19:37.680 Well, but Steve, not only did this guy who was representing these oil and gas companies,
19:37.680 --> 19:42.740 not only did he not specifically want what you say, but there are people that were sitting
19:42.740 --> 19:43.740 on the board.
19:43.740 --> 19:49.320 Like the next day, the board met and they were considering, you know, all the talkback
19:49.320 --> 19:55.460 that they heard, and one of the people on the board proposed that they do what this
19:55.460 --> 19:56.460 guy said.
19:56.460 --> 19:57.460 You know what I mean?
19:57.460 --> 20:03.080 Like, yeah, let's do the cost-benefit analysis, aka let's whitewash this thing and make it
20:03.080 --> 20:04.440 sound benign.
20:04.440 --> 20:09.320 Fossil fuel industry professionals, you know, these people took an active part in each stage
20:09.320 --> 20:12.120 of the Texas science standards review process.
20:12.120 --> 20:16.240 Every single time that there was any way that they could say what they wanted to say and
20:16.240 --> 20:18.240 skew things, they did.
20:18.240 --> 20:22.600 Any time it was open to the public, they successfully influenced the curriculum of all age ranges
20:22.600 --> 20:23.600 in Texas.
20:23.600 --> 20:26.560 And they did all this during the public hearings that I told you about.
20:26.560 --> 20:30.400 Now other things they argued for was like, there's just a couple more examples and just
20:30.400 --> 20:32.960 so you know, this story keeps going.
20:32.960 --> 20:37.680 I'm just telling you like the basic backbone of it, but there is so many details in here
20:37.680 --> 20:41.280 of all the things that they did and all the language that they want to change and all
20:41.280 --> 20:42.320 this stuff.
20:42.320 --> 20:44.080 But here's a good example.
20:44.080 --> 20:48.400 They didn't want the words renewable or nonrenewable used.
20:48.400 --> 20:53.420 Instead, they wanted the curriculum to use the term natural resources.
20:53.420 --> 21:02.500 So everything, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and oil and gas, these are all natural resources.
21:02.500 --> 21:06.320 It's astounding when you read it and you see it in black and white.
21:06.320 --> 21:09.000 It's so crystal goddamn clear what they're trying to do.
21:09.000 --> 21:11.360 I mean, anybody that works for oil and gas.
21:11.360 --> 21:14.760 Yeah, I mean, it is absolutely, Steve, you hit the nail on the head.
21:14.760 --> 21:16.000 It's double plus good.
21:16.000 --> 21:20.960 So you add the first thing that I said, where Texas has a massive influence on all of the
21:20.960 --> 21:26.440 textbooks that happen in the United States, massive influence, then their curricula is
21:26.440 --> 21:31.760 profoundly altered by these people who are essentially lobbyists.
21:31.760 --> 21:35.520 If you think about it, they're acting just like lobbyists, special interest groups who
21:35.520 --> 21:40.520 want certain things handled in certain ways in classroom textbooks.
21:40.520 --> 21:43.120 So their industry won't get hurt.
21:43.120 --> 21:44.120 It's disgusting.
21:44.120 --> 21:45.680 How do we let this happen?
21:45.680 --> 21:46.680 You look at it-
21:46.680 --> 21:47.680 It's also brilliant, right?
21:47.680 --> 21:48.680 Get them while they're young.
21:48.680 --> 21:49.680 Of course, man.
21:49.680 --> 21:50.680 Of course.
21:50.680 --> 21:53.320 But it doesn't just affect Texas, it affects the whole country.
21:53.320 --> 21:58.920 And this is why we need skeptical activists everywhere.
21:58.920 --> 22:05.000 Because at some town meeting, and just so you understand, this wasn't like tens of thousands
22:05.000 --> 22:08.160 of people in this huge consortium.
22:08.160 --> 22:12.840 This conversation and these decisions were being made in a relatively small venue in
22:12.840 --> 22:13.840 a town in Texas.
22:13.840 --> 22:19.520 Yeah, that's why I really think that we need to protect that process of determining the
22:19.520 --> 22:21.200 curriculum and the textbooks and whatever.
22:21.200 --> 22:29.280 It really should be done by, you know, scientists should be determining what is science in terms
22:29.280 --> 22:30.280 of what gets taught.
22:30.280 --> 22:31.280 Yeah.
22:31.280 --> 22:33.160 I mean, it sounds obvious.
22:33.160 --> 22:39.220 And educators should be deciding like what is an age appropriate educational level.
22:39.220 --> 22:40.220 And it's okay.
22:40.220 --> 22:45.520 I mean, obviously, I'm not against parents having input, because parents should absolutely
22:45.520 --> 22:49.640 have supervision and input into what their kids are taught.
22:49.640 --> 22:54.240 But there's got to be standards, it can't just be like anybody with an objection gets
22:54.240 --> 22:57.800 to interfere with the entire educational system, you know.
22:57.800 --> 22:59.440 It's a minority rule again.
22:59.440 --> 23:00.440 Yeah, right.
23:00.440 --> 23:03.280 It's the tyranny of the vocal minority, basically.
23:03.280 --> 23:04.280 All right.
23:04.280 --> 23:05.760 Well, we're not going to fix this problem.
23:05.760 --> 23:08.560 But this is something we definitely have to keep our eye on.
Effects of Climate in USA (24:30)
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24:28.320 --> 24:35.200 Kara, so you're going to give us an update on how global warming is doing in the U.S.
24:35.200 --> 24:40.800 Basically, Jay, as I'm listening to you talking about these great lengths that these lobbyists
24:40.800 --> 24:48.840 are going to to, as Steve mentioned, double plus good our climate education for kiddos,
24:48.840 --> 24:56.320 it's super scary because a report was just released, a draft report that really shows
24:56.320 --> 24:59.160 just how dire things are.
24:59.160 --> 25:03.220 Probably one of the most dire reports I've come across thus far.
25:03.220 --> 25:07.040 So there's something called the National Climate Assessment.
25:07.040 --> 25:13.720 We're in the fifth version of it right now, and you can read about it at GlobalChange.gov.
25:13.720 --> 25:17.480 The National Climate Assessment is federally mandated.
25:17.480 --> 25:24.120 It's basically what the U.S. government is contributing to climate knowledge.
25:24.120 --> 25:30.640 And the final report is slated to be published late next year in 2023.
25:30.640 --> 25:35.080 It was actually pushed back because while Trump was in office, he tried to squash the
25:35.080 --> 25:36.960 entire project.
25:36.960 --> 25:38.360 But we did not let that happen.
25:38.360 --> 25:40.280 It just ended up getting pushed back.
25:40.280 --> 25:45.080 So it's coming out in 2023, but they release a draft report early so that it can be peer
25:45.080 --> 25:48.840 reviewed and so that individuals can comment publicly.
25:48.840 --> 25:50.560 So the draft report was released.
25:50.560 --> 25:53.520 It's 1,695 pages.
25:53.520 --> 25:55.000 I did not read it all.
25:55.000 --> 25:56.000 I know.
25:56.000 --> 25:57.000 I'm very sorry.
25:57.000 --> 25:58.000 It just came out on Monday.
25:58.000 --> 26:06.520 I don't know if I could possibly read that many pages in four days, even if I didn't
26:06.520 --> 26:09.520 have a full time job and a dissertation and work on two podcasts.
26:09.520 --> 26:12.760 And oh, yeah, by the way, I'm in the middle of a hurricane right now.
26:12.760 --> 26:13.760 Did you know?
26:13.760 --> 26:14.760 Did you know?
26:14.760 --> 26:15.760 Yeah.
26:15.760 --> 26:17.960 I'm connected to the guys on my phone because I don't have Wi-Fi.
26:17.960 --> 26:18.960 It's ridiculous.
26:18.960 --> 26:23.280 All this special pleading, oh my goodness.
26:23.280 --> 26:28.880 So looking at the National Climate Assessment, it's not good.
26:28.880 --> 26:34.240 Basically there are some big takeaways, but I wanted to point to one thing that a lot
26:34.240 --> 26:39.640 of people are reporting on, which is first the price tag.
26:39.640 --> 26:42.440 I mean, you mentioned the cost benefit analysis.
26:42.440 --> 26:45.000 What about just the cost of climate change?
26:45.000 --> 26:46.720 Yeah, it's going to be trillions.
26:46.720 --> 26:47.720 Oh my gosh.
26:47.720 --> 26:48.720 Okay.
26:48.720 --> 26:55.520 So historically we were averaging eight $1 billion, and I don't mean historically like
26:55.520 --> 26:56.520 a long time ago.
26:56.520 --> 26:58.640 I just mean like a decade ago.
26:58.640 --> 27:03.880 We were averaging eight $1 billion weather events every year.
27:03.880 --> 27:05.760 That's already really bad, right?
27:05.760 --> 27:08.720 Wait, wait, let me add this up.
27:08.720 --> 27:09.720 That's $8 billion.
27:09.720 --> 27:10.720 That's $8 billion.
27:10.720 --> 27:11.720 Yeah.
27:11.720 --> 27:13.440 In the last two years, we've had 80.
27:13.440 --> 27:20.880 So we're averaging a $1 billion weather disaster every three weeks in the United States.
27:20.880 --> 27:22.920 Is that because of inflation or?
27:22.920 --> 27:23.920 No.
27:23.920 --> 27:27.060 I'm pretty sure that's adjusted for inflation.
27:27.060 --> 27:30.400 Another big thing that's kind of just like drives us home, and then we'll get into some
27:30.400 --> 27:37.880 of the brass tacks and the nitty gritty, is that the US is actually experiencing warming
27:37.880 --> 27:44.280 68% faster than the rest of the world average.
27:44.280 --> 27:45.280 We're not-
27:45.280 --> 27:50.600 We had the warmest October that I remember, and November 5th was 70 degrees in Connecticut.
27:50.600 --> 27:51.600 That's nuts.
27:51.600 --> 27:53.240 Like I said, I'm in a hurricane right now.
27:53.240 --> 27:55.680 Hurricanes don't usually happen on November 10th.
27:55.680 --> 27:58.600 The hurricane season is usually over by now.
27:58.600 --> 27:59.880 By October, yeah.
27:59.880 --> 28:00.880 Yeah.
28:00.880 --> 28:08.640 So we're looking at the average temperature in the continental 48 being 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit,
28:08.640 --> 28:15.560 which is 1.4 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial averages, when the global average temperature
28:15.560 --> 28:19.480 is 1 degree Celsius over pre-industrial averages.
28:19.480 --> 28:24.840 Now this is to be expected because land warms faster than water.
28:24.840 --> 28:29.360 So land area is faster than the ocean, and also higher latitudes warm faster than lower
28:29.360 --> 28:30.360 latitudes.
28:30.360 --> 28:34.640 So you see this in other parts of the world as well.
28:34.640 --> 28:39.240 But when we're talking about these global averages, we tend to talk about them in terms
28:39.240 --> 28:40.240 of a global average.
28:40.240 --> 28:42.020 Well, that's not the case here.
28:42.020 --> 28:43.760 We're not looking at 1 degree Celsius right now.
28:43.760 --> 28:46.320 We're looking at 1.4 degrees Celsius right now.
28:46.320 --> 28:54.300 We're seeing so much bad stuff happening as a result of this runaway warming.
28:54.300 --> 28:58.160 So let's look at some of the highlights of this report.
28:58.160 --> 29:03.420 The first one is that obviously the way that climate change is affecting us here in the
29:03.420 --> 29:06.580 US is different depending on where you live.
29:06.580 --> 29:13.840 And we kind of already know this, but we're seeing terrible wildfires in the West.
29:13.840 --> 29:19.840 We are seeing terrible storm systems in both the Northeast and the Southeast.
29:19.840 --> 29:24.140 We're seeing terrible heat waves across most of the Midwest.
29:24.140 --> 29:28.840 And one thing that this report does, which is the exact opposite, Jay, of what they're
29:28.840 --> 29:35.080 trying to do in these Texas textbooks, is that they continuously bring it back to who
29:35.080 --> 29:38.640 is the most at risk, who is getting harmed by this.
29:38.640 --> 29:45.160 And we know that communities that are already overburdened, so we're talking people of color,
29:45.160 --> 29:50.900 low income communities, indigenous people, these are the places where they're feeling
29:50.900 --> 29:52.040 it the worst.
29:52.040 --> 30:00.520 It's that really terrible irony that the people causing the most destruction are the most
30:00.520 --> 30:02.280 protected from it.
30:02.280 --> 30:07.140 The people that are doing the least to contribute to global climate change are the most vulnerable
30:07.140 --> 30:08.140 to it.
30:08.140 --> 30:09.840 They're really getting hurt.
30:09.840 --> 30:12.880 And if you are sitting there saying, I don't really notice a difference, I don't really
30:12.880 --> 30:16.120 feel this, I've been lucky, it's because of your privilege.
30:16.120 --> 30:17.200 You have been lucky.
30:17.200 --> 30:19.240 A lot of people aren't so lucky.
30:19.240 --> 30:23.520 One thing that we never think about here in the US is water.
30:23.520 --> 30:24.780 Water is free.
30:24.780 --> 30:26.680 You just open the tap.
30:26.680 --> 30:31.680 People don't think about the fact that water is actually a precious resource and it's being
30:31.680 --> 30:32.680 threatened.
30:32.680 --> 30:40.000 So when we have extreme rainfall, extreme flooding, that equates to less clean drinking
30:40.000 --> 30:41.000 water.
30:41.000 --> 30:42.000 Just straight up.
30:42.000 --> 30:46.320 We're seeing that salt water, because the seas are rising, we're having these horrible
30:46.320 --> 30:51.840 storm surges and aquifers are getting polluted with salt water, which means then we have
30:51.840 --> 30:53.000 to desalinate.
30:53.000 --> 30:54.700 We can't drink salt water.
30:54.700 --> 30:59.080 So if salt water is getting into our aquifers, if it's getting into our wells, if it's getting
30:59.080 --> 31:04.320 into areas where we usually hold fresh water, all that fresh water is now poisoned, quote
31:04.320 --> 31:05.320 unquote.
31:05.320 --> 31:07.720 We have to desalinate it to make it drinkable again.
31:07.720 --> 31:15.240 We're seeing that floods are taking basically toxins and flooding them into our wells and
31:15.240 --> 31:16.920 into our water table.
31:16.920 --> 31:20.480 So we're not able to drink the water that we should be able to drink.
31:20.480 --> 31:26.400 And we're also seeing that there are a lot of algal blooms that are existing at a higher
31:26.400 --> 31:29.100 rate than they ever did in the past.
31:29.100 --> 31:33.560 Just because there's more water in certain places, more water doesn't necessarily mean
31:33.560 --> 31:34.920 better.
31:34.920 --> 31:39.200 And then of course we know the opposite side of that problem, which is, I mean I know this
31:39.200 --> 31:44.760 very well being an LA person, like drought is real.
31:44.760 --> 31:45.760 It's real.
31:45.760 --> 31:50.560 We are running out of water in a lot of the places like these huge reservoirs that used
31:50.560 --> 31:53.640 to be full just aren't and they're devastating images.
31:53.640 --> 31:58.180 I mean just literally go online and look at before and after images.
31:58.180 --> 32:01.880 You can see where the water level used to be for like decades and decades and decades
32:01.880 --> 32:04.960 and then it's just receded, receded, receded.
32:04.960 --> 32:11.460 We know that there, I mean this is the, this point about kind of extreme events causing
32:11.460 --> 32:14.040 a lot of damage to homes and property.
32:14.040 --> 32:18.480 We kind of already touched on that with the increase in billion dollar events.
32:18.480 --> 32:29.720 In 2021 there were $20 billion plus events that collectively ended up costing $145 billion
32:29.720 --> 32:33.780 and killed almost 700 people just in the US.
32:33.780 --> 32:39.240 So another way to conceptualize that statistic that I gave you before, the US experienced
32:39.240 --> 32:47.040 $7.7 billion disasters, so $7.71 billion disasters annually over the past four decades, but in
32:47.040 --> 32:51.800 the past five years now it's 18 events each year.
32:51.800 --> 32:55.360 So that translates to once every three weeks, like I mentioned.
32:55.360 --> 32:57.760 And again, this doesn't hit everybody equally.
32:57.760 --> 33:01.960 Obviously poorer neighborhoods, neighborhoods with less are getting hit harder, neighborhoods
33:01.960 --> 33:07.160 who are less likely to rebuild as it is and less likely to mitigate these effects, right?
33:07.160 --> 33:10.800 This is an important one that I think we don't talk about enough, which is climate migration
33:10.800 --> 33:15.760 and climate displacement because I think we think of this as something that happens elsewhere
33:15.760 --> 33:22.160 in the world, but it's happening here, it's happening now and it's only going to get worse.
33:22.160 --> 33:25.440 So we've seen it like with Hurricane Maria really recently.
33:25.440 --> 33:30.300 I mean every major hurricane we see that there's a terrible displacement and migration because
33:30.300 --> 33:32.140 people lose their homes.
33:32.140 --> 33:34.380 They don't have a place to live anymore.
33:34.380 --> 33:36.640 And the sad thing is there's nowhere for them to go.
33:36.640 --> 33:39.420 The housing market is bananas right now.
33:39.420 --> 33:42.560 Interest rates are bananas because of inflation.
33:42.560 --> 33:46.860 Post COVID there's some real difficulty and instability in the job market.
33:46.860 --> 33:48.160 It's scary.
33:48.160 --> 33:55.440 It's really scary that people who have long felt like they built a life for themselves,
33:55.440 --> 33:59.780 a stable life for themselves are being forced out of where they live.
33:59.780 --> 34:02.780 And obviously who's going to carry that burden?
34:02.780 --> 34:04.660 We have to have government intervention.
34:04.660 --> 34:10.200 We have to be able as a community to take care of individuals and we're not doing a
34:10.200 --> 34:17.380 great job of that, but ultimately massive explosions in homelessness is devastating
34:17.380 --> 34:22.080 for the people who are displaced, but it's also devastating for the economy.
34:22.080 --> 34:25.240 Obviously this is also a growing public health threat and this is like another one of those
34:25.240 --> 34:30.740 externalized costs that you mentioned before, Steve, higher rates of rabies, higher rates
34:30.740 --> 34:36.060 of Lyme disease, higher rates of dengue, higher rates of Zika, higher rates of chikungunya.
34:36.060 --> 34:42.960 And that's just because of mosquitoes and different kind of ecological, different organisms
34:42.960 --> 34:47.860 that used to live in certain ecological niches moving to areas where they never lived before
34:47.860 --> 34:54.000 or exploding in population because of the changes in their evolutionary pressure.
34:54.000 --> 35:00.020 You add to that wildfire smoke, you add to that certain agricultural toxins and things
35:00.020 --> 35:02.460 like that being run off into the water.
35:02.460 --> 35:05.980 It's scary how much of a public health risk climate change is.
35:05.980 --> 35:07.820 People get sick because of climate change.
35:07.820 --> 35:10.100 There are a lot of downstream effects.
35:10.100 --> 35:13.220 And one thing that we don't often think about is it's not just us, right?
35:13.220 --> 35:19.600 Like we are not the only organisms who are negatively affected and really the canary
35:19.600 --> 35:23.300 has been in the coal mine for a long time and we've refused to look at it.
35:23.300 --> 35:29.700 A lot of amphibian species, bird species, fish species, plant species are either being
35:29.700 --> 35:36.360 completely driven out of their native range to sort of like higher latitudes or they're
35:36.360 --> 35:39.620 just going extinct at record numbers.
35:39.620 --> 35:45.020 Just these ecosystems can't adapt as fast as they need to because the change is outpacing
35:45.020 --> 35:48.600 evolution, like the natural pace of evolution.
35:48.600 --> 35:49.600 We know that.
35:49.600 --> 35:51.620 This is anthropogenic climate change.
35:51.620 --> 35:54.100 This isn't naturally occurring climate change.
35:54.100 --> 35:58.040 So these organisms can't adapt fast enough and you end up seeing, you know, like there's
35:58.040 --> 36:02.140 so many examples we can point to, but like too many lionfish in the ocean, too much algae
36:02.140 --> 36:06.660 in the ocean, too many sea urchins in the ocean and they just like take over.
36:06.660 --> 36:07.660 We see coral bleaching.
36:07.660 --> 36:11.460 We see all of these negative downstream effects.
36:11.460 --> 36:17.260 And then the last point that's made, which is always the last point that's made, is there
36:17.260 --> 36:21.260 is still a chance that we can do something about this.
36:21.260 --> 36:22.820 There is a chance.
36:22.820 --> 36:28.500 We probably can't do things incrementally the way we have been.
36:28.500 --> 36:29.860 It's just not fast enough.
36:29.860 --> 36:34.300 If we keep doing the incremental, like even Biden, I think his new commitment is something
36:34.300 --> 36:35.740 like reducing global emissions.
36:35.740 --> 36:39.280 I'm doing this from memory, but I think it's reducing global emissions by half, greenhouse
36:39.280 --> 36:45.940 emissions by half by 2030 and net zero by 2050, which is like we're not on track to
36:45.940 --> 36:47.300 meet that at all.
36:47.300 --> 36:51.840 Like when you look at our pace, we're nowhere near it, but that's like the new standard.
36:51.840 --> 36:56.880 If we do that, it's maybe going to be, I mean, here's what we know.
36:56.880 --> 37:01.740 If we stop putting out greenhouse gases, we stop global climate change.
37:01.740 --> 37:02.780 That's how it works.
37:02.780 --> 37:07.740 There's a little bit of a blowback effect right after where like the effects are going
37:07.740 --> 37:13.460 to continue on, but they won't necessarily run away.
37:13.460 --> 37:18.060 If we stop putting out greenhouse gases, there are no more greenhouse gases being put out
37:18.060 --> 37:22.900 above these levels, and then we can start to kind of fix and heal.
37:22.900 --> 37:27.580 But none of that is going to happen until we stop, and the truth is we're not stopping.
37:27.580 --> 37:32.620 We're slowing down, but we're beyond the point where slowing down is going to do anything.
37:32.620 --> 37:33.620 We have to stop.
37:33.620 --> 37:34.620 Yeah.
37:34.620 --> 37:39.280 So, Carol, I've been doing a lot of research on that very question, like basically where
37:39.280 --> 37:47.180 are we in our efforts to slow down climate change, and there's actually some good news
37:47.180 --> 37:48.540 here.
37:48.540 --> 37:54.340 I think the bad news is that the negative effects at any given temperature rise is worse
37:54.340 --> 37:55.640 than we thought.
37:55.640 --> 38:03.060 So 2.0 is worse than we thought 2.0 was going to be 10 years ago, but the projection of
38:03.060 --> 38:05.400 where we are heading is getting better.
38:05.400 --> 38:12.380 So 10 years ago, the business as usual projection, like if we don't make substantial changes
38:12.380 --> 38:18.820 to what's happening, was that we would end up somewhere between like three to four or
38:18.820 --> 38:24.220 even higher degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, right?
38:24.220 --> 38:34.580 Now today, the business as usual projection is more like 2.3, 2.4 degrees, and what business
38:34.580 --> 38:42.380 as usual is, is if all of the countries do not reverse policies that they've already
38:42.380 --> 38:46.780 funded to mitigate climate change, so all they have to do is just keep doing what they've
38:46.780 --> 38:53.020 already actually funded, we'll settle in somewhere around 2.3, 2.4.
38:53.020 --> 38:59.560 If they keep all of their commitments that they've made at COP26 last year, even ones
38:59.560 --> 39:06.900 that haven't been funded yet by their government, we'll keep warming below 2.0, probably like
39:06.900 --> 39:10.060 somewhere around 1.8.
39:10.060 --> 39:18.100 We're not on track to get to 1.5, to keep it below 1.5, which was the Paris Accord goal,
39:18.100 --> 39:22.700 but they didn't commit to doing things that would achieve that goal.
39:22.700 --> 39:26.980 The commitments only keep it to maybe 1.8, and they've only funded enough to keep it
39:26.980 --> 39:29.380 to like 2.3, 2.4.
39:29.380 --> 39:32.140 That's still a lot better than where we were 10 years ago.
39:32.140 --> 39:35.340 Yeah, but remember, the reason it's better than where it was 10 years ago is because
39:35.340 --> 39:37.700 we've been doing so much.
39:37.700 --> 39:39.140 I know, because we've been doing things.
39:39.140 --> 39:40.660 I know that that's the point.
39:40.660 --> 39:41.660 And that is good.
39:41.660 --> 39:42.660 That's very good.
39:42.660 --> 39:43.660 Yeah.
39:43.660 --> 39:54.060 If we continue to up our game, I think at this point I would say that we have a good
39:54.060 --> 39:59.420 chance of keeping it below 2.0, 1.5, probably not.
39:59.420 --> 40:05.920 That would take a massive effort that no one really thinks we have the political will around
40:05.920 --> 40:07.880 the world to do it.
40:07.880 --> 40:11.980 Half of the solution is going to be technological progress.
40:11.980 --> 40:14.440 Things are progressing nicely.
40:14.440 --> 40:22.040 And the other half is things like Biden's climate change mitigation funding, which is
40:22.040 --> 40:23.300 making a difference.
40:23.300 --> 40:25.780 The industry responded.
40:25.780 --> 40:37.020 They're investing in transitioning to lower carbon technologies in response to that funding.
40:37.020 --> 40:42.040 And ultimately, here's the point of all that.
40:42.040 --> 40:43.780 It's going to hurt a little bit.
40:43.780 --> 40:46.020 We have to make sacrifices right now.
40:46.020 --> 40:47.020 We have to.
40:47.020 --> 40:48.020 I'm not sure I agree with that.
40:48.020 --> 40:49.020 I'm not sure I agree with that.
40:49.020 --> 40:50.020 Are you serious, Steve?
40:50.020 --> 40:51.020 Yeah, I am.
40:51.020 --> 40:52.020 I am serious.
40:52.020 --> 40:53.420 It's business as usual.
40:53.420 --> 40:59.460 No, there's a lot of territory between sacrificing and business as usual.
40:59.460 --> 41:01.420 We don't have to really sacrifice.
41:01.420 --> 41:04.340 All we have to do is invest wisely.
41:04.340 --> 41:05.340 That's it.
41:05.340 --> 41:10.260 I'm talking about personal experiential sacrifice.
41:10.260 --> 41:11.260 I don't think that the individuals-
41:11.260 --> 41:12.980 Give up your gas car.
41:12.980 --> 41:14.340 Don't use as much water.
41:14.340 --> 41:15.560 Yes, we do have to.
41:15.560 --> 41:17.780 We cannot keep living the way we've been living.
41:17.780 --> 41:18.780 We can't.
41:18.780 --> 41:20.340 So water is a separate issue.
41:20.340 --> 41:26.260 There are already places that are experiencing water insufficiency, I mean obviously around
41:26.260 --> 41:29.580 the world, but even in the US now, since that's what you're talking about.
41:29.580 --> 41:35.780 So yes, there are populations even in developed nations that are already paying the price
41:35.780 --> 41:38.220 for existing global warming.
41:38.220 --> 41:42.780 But I'm saying in terms of the solution, the solutions don't have to be sacrifice.
41:42.780 --> 41:45.460 The solutions really are just being smart.
41:45.460 --> 41:49.380 It's just investing money where we will get the most bang for the buck.
41:49.380 --> 41:57.140 If we do that, if we invested intelligently and we, for example, invest and this is why
41:57.140 --> 42:01.980 I think it was called the Inflation Reduction Act, but it included a lot of climate change
42:01.980 --> 42:03.940 mitigation funding.
42:03.940 --> 42:08.860 I read through that whole thing, there's a lot of smart funding in there that is going
42:08.860 --> 42:10.220 to move us in the right direction.
42:10.220 --> 42:14.100 We need a lot more of that and we need a lot of other countries to do that.
42:14.100 --> 42:18.580 But if we invest and upgrade in the grid, we continue our investments in grid storage,
42:18.580 --> 42:24.500 we continue to invest in building, build out the wind and solar as fast as we can to get
42:24.500 --> 42:31.060 to that 30 to 40% rate and then push it further by investing in the grid and grid storage.
42:31.060 --> 42:38.420 If we start investing in nuclear and geothermal and hydroelectric, we can get there.
42:38.420 --> 42:43.860 We incentivize the steel making industry and the cement making industry to continue to
42:43.860 --> 42:48.380 develop lower carbon alternatives, which there's already a lot of science there to work with
42:48.380 --> 42:54.320 – we absolutely can get there and we can do it without each individual having to make
42:54.320 --> 42:55.320 a big sacrifice.
42:55.320 --> 43:05.740 In fact, we'll be making less sacrifice because it'll be a lot easier on the individual
43:05.740 --> 43:08.140 than the resulting climate change is going to be.
43:08.140 --> 43:11.740 Of course it's going to be easier on certain individuals than the resulting climate change
43:11.740 --> 43:16.860 is going to be on certain individuals, but I fundamentally disagree with this mentality.
43:16.860 --> 43:21.180 I really, really don't believe that we can do everything on the other side of it.
43:21.180 --> 43:27.660 It's not all going to be industry-like free market options for preventing these kinds
43:27.660 --> 43:29.260 of outcomes.
43:29.260 --> 43:34.900 We cannot continue to live the extractive and consumptive lifestyles that we live.
43:34.900 --> 43:35.900 We can't.
43:35.900 --> 43:37.780 That's the reason this happened.
43:37.780 --> 43:42.780 We have to be mindful of how we live our lives because otherwise we're constantly going
43:42.780 --> 43:49.700 to see industries who claim that they're doing this in the best interest of their consumer
43:49.700 --> 43:52.140 to make sure that they get a pass.
43:52.140 --> 43:53.140 And I disagree.
43:53.140 --> 43:55.580 I just don't think those things are mutually exclusive.
43:55.580 --> 44:00.100 When I talk about making sacrifices, I don't mean that you have to die for this cause.
44:00.100 --> 44:05.260 I mean that you can't keep living as if climate change doesn't exist.
44:05.260 --> 44:08.140 I don't feel like buying an electric car was a sacrifice.
44:08.140 --> 44:11.820 I actually enjoy my electric car better than I do any gas car I've ever owned.
44:11.820 --> 44:17.100 Well, a lot of people don't feel that way, and that's what I'm talking about.
44:17.100 --> 44:21.340 A lot of people don't want to put a flow reducer on their showerhead.
44:21.340 --> 44:25.780 A lot of people don't want to turn their water off when they're brushing their teeth.
44:25.780 --> 44:30.900 I know they sound stupid and small, but the reason that we have to make these massive
44:30.900 --> 44:39.980 regulatory jumps in order to wildly mitigate, because the main outcome of this report is
44:39.980 --> 44:41.780 we cannot keep doing incremental shit.
44:41.780 --> 44:42.900 It's not working.
44:42.900 --> 44:50.260 We have to revolutionize the way that we want to put a stop to this.
44:50.260 --> 44:53.260 We do fundamentally disagree on this issue, because I think that you're wrong.
44:53.260 --> 44:57.860 I also think that your strategy will fail, because people are not going to do it.
44:57.860 --> 45:01.220 And I think my strategy will succeed, because people will do it.
45:01.220 --> 45:07.780 But you're also looking at it like it's a binary, like it's a dialectic, and it's not.
45:07.780 --> 45:10.280 Both of these things have to happen.
45:10.280 --> 45:13.420 We have to fundamentally change our approach to climate change, which young people, by
45:13.420 --> 45:14.900 the way, are.
45:14.900 --> 45:15.900 Young people get it.
45:15.900 --> 45:16.900 Yeah, I agree.
45:16.900 --> 45:20.940 But I think, and I agree, I think we need to science the shit out of it and moneyball
45:20.940 --> 45:26.240 the shit out of it, meaning that we need to say, what is the shortest path between where
45:26.240 --> 45:34.040 we are now and a massive decarbonization of our electrical sector and transportation
45:34.040 --> 45:37.580 sector and industrial sector, right?
45:37.580 --> 45:45.460 And that path is through picking the low-hanging fruit and making the most cost-effective decisions
45:45.460 --> 45:46.460 possible.
45:46.460 --> 45:47.460 Oh, hugely.
45:47.460 --> 45:51.180 And that's also the most politically expedient way to get there.
45:51.180 --> 45:54.540 And if our message is, all right, guys, we all have to sacrifice, we're going to get
45:54.540 --> 45:55.540 nowhere.
45:55.540 --> 45:57.420 It's just not going to happen.
45:57.420 --> 46:02.120 I hear what you're saying, like it's a messaging problem, but ultimately we do have to sacrifice.
46:02.120 --> 46:06.260 The truth of the matter is that may be the low-hanging fruit.
46:06.260 --> 46:11.220 It may be the most obvious and the most effective algorithm.
46:11.220 --> 46:16.520 But if people don't willfully do it, it's moot.
46:16.520 --> 46:17.520 And ultimately-
46:17.520 --> 46:21.500 Yeah, but that's why I think the solution can't be, all right, we need 8 billion people
46:21.500 --> 46:22.500 to change their behavior.
46:22.500 --> 46:23.500 That can't be the approach.
46:23.500 --> 46:24.500 That will never work.
46:24.500 --> 46:25.500 I never said that was the solution.
46:25.500 --> 46:26.900 I mean, that's not going to work.
46:26.900 --> 46:27.900 We can't-
46:27.900 --> 46:28.900 You're really minimizing what I said.
46:28.900 --> 46:31.620 No, I'm just saying, well, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.
46:31.620 --> 46:35.460 You're saying we all have to work together to make this work, and we all have to sacrifice
46:35.460 --> 46:36.700 individually.
46:36.700 --> 46:42.260 Just from a practical point of view, getting a lot of people to do something is a failed
46:42.260 --> 46:43.260 approach.
46:43.260 --> 46:44.260 It never works.
46:44.260 --> 46:46.420 I would rather pass one law than get-
46:46.420 --> 46:49.860 Yeah, but that's how you get people to do stuff, is you regulate the shit out of them.
46:49.860 --> 46:52.020 Yeah, I agree with that as well, but I mean-
46:52.020 --> 46:54.980 But I'm saying we need to regulate things that actually might hurt a little bit.
46:54.980 --> 46:59.700 We need to stop going, oh, it's never going to be popular, so we can't do it.
46:59.700 --> 47:02.180 I'm scared of the people we keep putting in power.
47:02.180 --> 47:08.420 Yeah, but you're just sort of pushing, kicking that can one leg down, if you say, all right,
47:08.420 --> 47:13.460 we're going to vote for people who are going to tell us things we don't want to hear.
47:13.460 --> 47:15.180 It's also not going to work.
47:15.180 --> 47:16.180 You're going to end up with-
47:16.180 --> 47:17.180 Because they won't vote for those people.
47:17.180 --> 47:18.520 With the global warming denials.
47:18.520 --> 47:23.900 If you say, all right, listen, all we have to do is invest wisely, and also I think we
47:23.900 --> 47:26.820 should be putting the burden on the industry, not the individuals.
47:26.820 --> 47:27.820 Of course we should.
47:27.820 --> 47:29.980 We should regulate the industries.
47:29.980 --> 47:33.420 I personally think we should just price carbon, and all the experts agree that that's the
47:33.420 --> 47:34.420 best way to fix this.
47:34.420 --> 47:36.940 Carbon tax, of course that's the way to do it.
47:36.940 --> 47:39.100 But nobody wants to do it, unfortunately.
47:39.100 --> 47:44.300 I'm not saying that this is a marketing strategy, is to tell people it's going to hurt.
47:44.300 --> 47:46.060 Of course that's not what I'm saying.
47:46.060 --> 47:50.100 What I'm saying is that we all need to be realistic, and stop living in a Pollyanna
47:50.100 --> 47:53.840 world where we're not willing to have it hurt.
47:53.840 --> 47:58.220 The things we have to do as a society are going to hurt a little bit, and if we sit
47:58.220 --> 48:02.020 here and cross our arms and say, I'm not willing to make any changes.
48:02.020 --> 48:06.140 I want to live the same extractive, consumptive life I've always lived.
48:06.140 --> 48:08.820 I'm sorry, we're not going to get out of this.
48:08.820 --> 48:10.400 That's how we got into it.
48:10.400 --> 48:13.660 My perspective is, I'll just say this, it's not necessarily mutually exclusive to what
48:13.660 --> 48:22.580 you're saying, but I would say just strategically, I would say let's do all the win-wins first.
48:22.580 --> 48:23.580 Let's do all-
48:23.580 --> 48:25.260 Yeah, and I would say we should have already done all of those.
48:25.260 --> 48:26.260 I agree.
48:26.260 --> 48:27.660 All of this we should have done 20 years ago.
48:27.660 --> 48:30.540 There's no question about that.
48:30.540 --> 48:36.460 We should go back in time 20 years and completely change the course of what we've done the last
48:36.460 --> 48:37.460 two decades.
48:37.460 --> 48:38.460 I like that plan.
48:38.460 --> 48:46.860 Failing that, again, the quickest path is first going through all the things that do
48:46.860 --> 48:48.340 not require sacrifice.
48:48.340 --> 48:50.420 They just require being smart.
48:50.420 --> 48:56.260 Let's do those things, and if we also then have to make some sacrifice after all of that,
48:56.260 --> 48:58.220 that's fine, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
48:58.220 --> 49:02.340 I guess what I'm scared of is that 50% of the country thinks that those smart, low-hanging
49:02.340 --> 49:05.380 fruit things are sacrifices for them.
49:05.380 --> 49:09.060 Well, that's where messaging can help.
49:09.060 --> 49:13.220 If you ask people, why don't you want to drive an electric car, they give bullshit reasons
49:13.220 --> 49:16.300 that aren't true because they have misconceptions about it.
49:16.300 --> 49:18.120 They go, oh, the range isn't enough.
49:18.120 --> 49:19.120 That's not true.
49:19.120 --> 49:25.460 I think my thing is unless we're on the bleeding edge of this, we're already behind.
49:25.460 --> 49:30.580 But as I said, it's actually not as bad as it was 10 years ago.
49:30.580 --> 49:37.740 The thing is doing the things that we're doing and the technological progress has significantly
49:37.740 --> 49:41.580 improved our position, and it has.
49:41.580 --> 49:42.580 It just has.
49:42.580 --> 49:43.840 And we have to update the models constantly.
49:43.840 --> 49:50.740 And Catherine Hayhoe, who's quoted a lot in this one WAFO article, she basically makes
49:50.740 --> 49:54.700 the point, and I think it's an important point because we don't do this enough, that like
49:54.700 --> 49:56.960 this is all just modeling.
49:56.960 --> 50:00.700 We don't know if there's a difference between 1.6 and 1.7.
50:00.700 --> 50:01.700 These are just rants.
50:01.700 --> 50:06.980 Yes, there's data that goes into this, but these are just arbitrary cutoffs.
50:06.980 --> 50:08.980 It's all modeling.
50:08.980 --> 50:14.180 The bad news is the effect of the temperature is worse than we thought, but where we're
50:14.180 --> 50:20.180 going to land is better than it was.
50:20.180 --> 50:26.680 I do think that the only ultimate solution is technological, but what we really should
50:26.680 --> 50:32.620 be focusing on is just making that happen as quickly as possible by investing optimally
50:32.620 --> 50:35.640 and regulating industry optimally.
50:35.640 --> 50:37.680 And we're not there yet.
50:37.680 --> 50:39.340 We're moving in the right direction at least.
50:39.340 --> 50:44.940 Kara, my concern is, well, first let me say I really do agree with what you're saying.
50:44.940 --> 50:52.540 I would love it if we made palpable, very, very strong changes to our society in order
50:52.540 --> 50:54.700 to help the environment, absolutely.
50:54.700 --> 51:00.220 And I would be willing to sacrifice and spend more money on a lot of things and make changes
51:00.220 --> 51:07.340 at this point because I feel how desperate the situation is just like you do, and I want
51:07.340 --> 51:08.340 that.
51:08.340 --> 51:13.580 I honestly don't think that most people in the United States are capable of doing what
51:13.580 --> 51:14.940 I just said.
51:14.940 --> 51:18.320 But like even in the U.S., what are we going to do, you say, oh yeah, we should let gas
51:18.320 --> 51:19.320 be $5 a gallon.
51:19.320 --> 51:20.860 It's like, yeah, I could survive that.
51:20.860 --> 51:24.620 My point is, but there's a lot of people who can't survive that, like they literally cannot
51:24.620 --> 51:25.620 afford that.
51:25.620 --> 51:28.900 I totally turn off the water when I'm brushing my teeth.
51:28.900 --> 51:29.900 Thank you.
51:29.900 --> 51:31.460 I don't even brush my teeth with water anymore.
51:31.460 --> 51:32.460 Because of you, Kara.
51:32.460 --> 51:33.460 Thank you.
51:33.460 --> 51:34.460 I'm not kidding.
51:34.460 --> 51:35.460 Yeah, that makes me so happy.
51:35.460 --> 51:36.460 I just gargle with baking soda.
51:36.460 --> 51:39.940 I thought about that for so many times, like, yep, got to shut it down.
51:39.940 --> 51:43.300 I remember what Kara said and that was like a habit.
51:43.300 --> 51:44.300 I love it.
51:44.300 --> 51:45.300 We installed new toilets in our house.
51:45.300 --> 51:46.300 All.
51:46.300 --> 51:47.300 Low flow, baby.
51:47.300 --> 51:48.300 Yeah.
51:48.300 --> 51:49.300 Go with the low.
51:49.300 --> 51:50.300 All right, guys.
51:50.300 --> 51:51.300 Let's move on.
51:51.300 --> 51:52.300 Healthy discourse.
Closest Black Hole (51:52)
- [link_URL TITLE][5]
51:52.300 --> 51:53.300 All right, Bob.
51:53.300 --> 51:57.700 I understand that astronomers have detected the closest black hole to the Earth.
51:57.700 --> 51:59.220 Like that Disney movie from 1979?
51:59.220 --> 52:01.100 You understand nothing.
52:01.100 --> 52:07.820 I will say, I will say boffins baffled by black hole in backyard.
52:07.820 --> 52:08.820 Oh, Bob.
52:08.820 --> 52:10.460 I like that.
52:10.460 --> 52:17.060 So non alliteratively and less pithily, scientists have found the closest black hole to the Earth,
52:17.060 --> 52:20.060 three times closer, in fact, than the previous record holder.
52:20.060 --> 52:22.360 And it comes wrapped in a mystery, however.
52:22.360 --> 52:26.320 It's orbited by a sun like star and it shouldn't be there.
52:26.320 --> 52:29.660 So how did these two crazy kids get together?
52:29.660 --> 52:34.320 This was published in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, led by
52:34.320 --> 52:39.700 Kareem El Badri, is an astrophysicist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
52:39.700 --> 52:43.740 So this black hole is called Gaia BH1.
52:43.740 --> 52:46.020 It's 1600 light years away.
52:46.020 --> 52:47.140 And you know, that's a lot.
52:47.140 --> 52:50.620 That's like, you know, nine thousand and a half trillion miles.
52:50.620 --> 52:53.940 But you know, it isn't a lot at the same time.
52:53.940 --> 52:59.540 The National Science Foundation's Newar Lab said it's in our cosmic backyard, which it
52:59.540 --> 53:00.540 really is.
53:00.540 --> 53:02.460 Sixteen hundred light years is not a lot.
53:02.460 --> 53:08.100 It also has a binary partner that is very much like the sun and is about as far from
53:08.100 --> 53:10.620 the black hole as we are from our sun.
53:10.620 --> 53:16.180 So take our solar system, take away all the planets and throw the sun where we are and
53:16.180 --> 53:18.540 put a big black hole where the sun is.
53:18.540 --> 53:20.100 And that's this system.
53:20.100 --> 53:21.280 So that's basically it.
53:21.280 --> 53:27.020 So the black hole has 10 times the mass of our sun, making it a stellar mass black hole,
53:27.020 --> 53:30.660 which typically ranges from five to 100 solar masses.
53:30.660 --> 53:35.820 And we've only detected a handful of stellar mass black holes in the Milky Way.
53:35.820 --> 53:40.860 And most are active, meaning that they pull matter from a companion and that process releases
53:40.860 --> 53:43.420 intense radiation like X-rays.
53:43.420 --> 53:49.580 But now not all stellar mass black holes that inhabit binary systems are actively feeding
53:49.580 --> 53:50.580 though.
53:50.580 --> 53:52.060 It's kind of like Jay.
53:52.060 --> 53:57.140 There are times during family dinners when he's not actively feeding, but you need specialized
53:57.140 --> 53:59.980 instrumentation to detect that.
53:59.980 --> 54:07.940 It's those hidden small black holes, stellar mass black holes that these researchers have
54:07.940 --> 54:12.920 been looking for and they found one after examining data from the European Space Agency's
54:12.920 --> 54:19.020 Gaia Space Observatory, hence the name Gaia BH1, black hole one.
54:19.020 --> 54:25.260 And Gaia studies basically the stars of the Milky Way in detail.
54:25.260 --> 54:30.700 These detailed measurements revealed a tiny wobble in a star that could be caused by a
54:30.700 --> 54:32.620 great unseen mass.
54:32.620 --> 54:36.700 So for follow-up observations and calculations, they used what's called the Gemini, or is
54:36.700 --> 54:43.360 it Gemini, the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph, and that allowed for even more precise velocity
54:43.360 --> 54:48.780 measurements and orbital periods, which then allowed for the calculation of the masses
54:48.780 --> 54:49.780 involved.
54:49.780 --> 54:51.080 And that was obviously critical.
54:51.080 --> 54:56.180 This revealed that the inner binary partner had to have something close to 10 times the
54:56.180 --> 54:57.900 mass of the sun.
54:57.900 --> 55:01.700 And I love how they described their conclusion in their paper.
55:01.700 --> 55:07.580 They said, we find no plausible astrophysical scenario that can explain the orbit and does
55:07.580 --> 55:09.640 not involve a black hole.
55:09.640 --> 55:13.660 So in other words, it's a fricking black hole, duh.
55:13.660 --> 55:18.540 This is not only then the closest black hole to the Earth we know of, but also the first
55:18.540 --> 55:24.500 verified sun-like star in such a wide orbit around a stellar mass black hole.
55:24.500 --> 55:29.820 And that's the key to the coming mystery of this system is like, this is a sun-like star
55:29.820 --> 55:33.020 and it's in a very, very wide orbit, which is unusual.
55:33.020 --> 55:37.980 Like I was saying, this is a mysterious system in a lot of ways because it doesn't make sense.
55:37.980 --> 55:42.060 The black hole, think about this black hole, it used to be a star, right?
55:42.060 --> 55:43.860 I mean, duh.
55:43.860 --> 55:50.260 That star probably had about 20 solar masses because that would probably produce a 10 solar
55:50.260 --> 55:51.260 mass black hole.
55:51.260 --> 55:56.180 So it had 20 solar masses, which means that it only lives for a few million years because
55:56.180 --> 55:59.420 it goes through that fuel so fast.
55:59.420 --> 56:05.500 And it would have puffed up into a super giant and consumed the star that's there now, the
56:05.500 --> 56:06.920 sun-like star that's there.
56:06.920 --> 56:13.460 Even before that star became a mature star, it would have just totally consumed it and
56:13.460 --> 56:15.340 wouldn't be there now.
56:15.340 --> 56:19.960 Models that the scientists have run show that the star could have survived, but it means
56:19.960 --> 56:26.180 that it would have ended up in a much, much tighter orbit, nothing like the 100 million
56:26.180 --> 56:30.380 mile or 95 million mile orbit that it's in now.
56:30.380 --> 56:35.660 So it's just like they're very puzzled, which of course is good in science in a lot of ways.
56:35.660 --> 56:40.160 So that means that our models of black hole binary evolution may need tweaking and there
56:40.160 --> 56:44.140 may be far more such systems than we think out there.
56:44.140 --> 56:48.220 Kareem El Badri said, it's interesting that this system is not easily accommodated by
56:48.220 --> 56:50.340 standard binary evolution models.
56:50.340 --> 56:55.060 It poses many questions about how this binary system was formed, as well as how many of
56:55.060 --> 56:57.540 these dormant black holes there are out there.
56:57.540 --> 57:00.700 The observations also leave a mystery to be solved.
57:00.700 --> 57:06.500 Despite a shared history with its exotic neighbor, why is the companion star in this binary system
57:06.500 --> 57:08.100 so normal?
57:08.100 --> 57:14.800 I'm sure in the future when Gaia releases more data, these researchers and other researchers
57:14.800 --> 57:20.380 of course will be poring over it, looking for more stealthy, dormant, stellar mass black
57:20.380 --> 57:27.380 holes and maybe find one even closer to Earth and hopefully the boffins will be less baffled.
57:27.380 --> 57:29.620 Excellent.
57:29.620 --> 57:33.020 But this black hole is not going to gobble us up though, right Bob?
57:33.020 --> 57:34.020 1600?
57:34.020 --> 57:36.460 No, it's just like, yeah, I love that.
57:36.460 --> 57:42.740 The gravity is going to reach 1600 light years and sure, that gravity is theoretically detectable,
57:42.740 --> 57:47.100 but it's, you know, it's so far away, it's not magically going to reach out and suck
57:47.100 --> 57:53.100 anything up, just like, you know, it's gravity folks, it's intense, but it's far.
57:53.100 --> 57:58.700 If our own sun were a black hole, gravitationally wouldn't, but of the same mass as our sun,
57:58.700 --> 57:59.700 right?
57:59.700 --> 58:01.700 But just in a black hole, gravitationally wouldn't make any difference to us.
58:01.700 --> 58:02.700 Yeah.
58:02.700 --> 58:03.700 It would get dark and we would stay in orbit.
58:03.700 --> 58:04.700 It would still be orbiting.
58:04.700 --> 58:07.100 We would still be orbiting it in the same way, the gravity wouldn't affect us anymore.
58:07.100 --> 58:08.100 We just wouldn't be alive because...
58:08.100 --> 58:09.100 It would just be dark.
58:09.100 --> 58:10.100 Yeah.
58:10.100 --> 58:11.100 Yeah.
58:11.100 --> 58:12.100 And cold.
58:12.100 --> 58:13.100 And cold.
58:13.100 --> 58:14.100 Very cold.
AWARE II Study of NDEs (58:13)
- [link_URL TITLE][6]
58:14.100 --> 58:15.100 All right, guys.
58:15.100 --> 58:16.900 I have a quick update on near-death experiences.
58:16.900 --> 58:17.900 Cool.
58:17.900 --> 58:18.900 Yeah.
58:18.900 --> 58:19.900 So I think...
58:19.900 --> 58:20.900 They're not as near as we thought?
58:20.900 --> 58:28.780 We spoke previously about the AWARE study and now the AWARE 2 study preliminary results
58:28.780 --> 58:29.780 are out.
58:29.780 --> 58:32.920 It hasn't been published yet, but they are being presented.
58:32.920 --> 58:39.620 So essentially what the study is doing is looking to see if they could document what
58:39.620 --> 58:44.380 is happening at the moment of near-death experiences.
58:44.380 --> 58:50.060 So they look at people who are undergoing CPR, right?
58:50.060 --> 58:55.420 They identify them in the participating emergency rooms and then they follow them.
58:55.420 --> 59:00.500 And for those that survive, which is a minority, you know, if you're getting CPR, chances are
59:00.500 --> 59:01.500 you're not going to survive.
59:01.500 --> 59:08.980 So for those who do, they see if they report any near-death experiences and they characterize
59:08.980 --> 59:09.980 them.
59:09.980 --> 59:17.340 But they also are doing detailed EEGs, electroencephalograms, during the CPR to see what the brain activity
59:17.340 --> 59:18.340 is.
59:18.340 --> 59:23.520 And remember, this is the same study where they put the cards on the tops of shelves
59:23.520 --> 59:25.900 to see if people were floating above their body.
59:25.900 --> 59:26.900 They could read the cards.
59:26.900 --> 59:28.980 It's really the only way you could see them.
59:28.980 --> 59:33.860 So the goal of this study, as far as I could tell, is, you know, if you're going to say
59:33.860 --> 59:40.780 that near-death experiences are truly anomalous, right, that they are not just explained as
59:40.780 --> 59:44.200 brain activity, you have to do two things.
59:44.200 --> 59:52.060 You have to prove that the experience that is being reported occurred during the near-death
59:52.060 --> 59:53.060 time period, right?
59:53.060 --> 59:55.440 It had to occur near-death.
59:55.440 --> 59:59.180 And you also have to show that there was no brain activity that could account for that
59:59.180 --> 01:00:00.980 experience, right?
01:00:00.980 --> 01:00:04.720 So that's sort of the goal of this study, is to show those two things.
01:00:04.720 --> 01:00:08.820 What do you mean there's no brain activity that could account for the experience, though?
01:00:08.820 --> 01:00:13.540 In other words, there's either no or insignificant brain activity, right?
01:00:13.540 --> 01:00:19.020 If you could show, like, the brain is flatlined at a time when they are absolutely having
01:00:19.020 --> 01:00:20.500 an experience.
01:00:20.500 --> 01:00:21.500 Then that would prove what?
01:00:21.500 --> 01:00:23.100 Well, that's a good question, right?
01:00:23.100 --> 01:00:28.820 It would just prove that it's that near-death experiences are not brain experiences.
01:00:28.820 --> 01:00:29.820 Okay.
01:00:29.820 --> 01:00:30.820 Yeah.
01:00:30.820 --> 01:00:34.540 Because I feel like ultimately that's an unanswerable question, because there could
01:00:34.540 --> 01:00:37.020 always be a brain reason for it.
01:00:37.020 --> 01:00:39.940 Well, but not if there's zero brain activity, right?
01:00:39.940 --> 01:00:40.940 Right.
01:00:40.940 --> 01:00:44.100 But then wouldn't that nullify the experience altogether?
01:00:44.100 --> 01:00:46.440 You couldn't have an experience if you had no brain activity.
01:00:46.440 --> 01:00:52.720 If you're a naturalist like you and I are, Kara, if you don't believe in all that physical
01:00:52.720 --> 01:00:59.140 nonsense about the brain causing consciousness, then—and near-death experiences are almost
01:00:59.140 --> 01:01:04.100 universally cited as evidence for dualism, right, for the fact that consciousness is
01:01:04.100 --> 01:01:05.260 more than just brain activity.
01:01:05.260 --> 01:01:07.500 Well, then how do you explain NDE's, right?
01:01:07.500 --> 01:01:14.740 It's like, well, but again, in order for an NDE to be evidence for an experience separate
01:01:14.740 --> 01:01:18.620 from brain activity, you need those two components.
01:01:18.620 --> 01:01:22.700 The reason why those are hard to prove is, one, if somebody wakes up a day or two days
01:01:22.700 --> 01:01:26.900 or a week later and they go, hey, I had this weird experience, how do you know what happened
01:01:26.900 --> 01:01:31.180 when they were getting their CPR, when they were dead, right?
01:01:31.180 --> 01:01:36.300 It could have happened any time during the recovery period.
01:01:36.300 --> 01:01:44.740 So you need to show that that experience formed when they were near death, and if they could
01:01:44.740 --> 01:01:50.260 do that, then we could say, well, you're getting CPR, that's producing decent blood flow.
01:01:50.260 --> 01:01:55.860 It's usually 20, 25 percent of what normal blood flow would be, and maybe that's enough
01:01:55.860 --> 01:02:00.100 to generate enough brain activity that they're experiencing something, you know, like dreaming
01:02:00.100 --> 01:02:05.100 or whatever, some altered state of consciousness, but enough to form some memories that they
01:02:05.100 --> 01:02:11.020 then interpret later as whatever culturally appropriate near-death experience they want
01:02:11.020 --> 01:02:13.220 to believe, right?
01:02:13.220 --> 01:02:15.620 So that's why the study was organized the way it was.
01:02:15.620 --> 01:02:19.900 They have an EEG going during CPR, and they want to see if people can report that they
01:02:19.900 --> 01:02:25.420 were floating above their body and seeing the card, or just that they accurately described
01:02:25.420 --> 01:02:26.820 what was happening in the room.
01:02:26.820 --> 01:02:31.660 That's a way more problematic criterion, because, you know, what do you consider accurate?
01:02:31.660 --> 01:02:33.660 Oh, there were people working on me.
01:02:33.660 --> 01:02:34.660 Yeah, of course there were.
01:02:34.660 --> 01:02:39.500 It's a kind of emergency room, and so just like telling just a typical kind of story.
01:02:39.500 --> 01:02:47.740 Now, with the WARE-1, the first study, nobody that got enrolled into the study and survived
01:02:47.740 --> 01:02:51.260 that was in an ER that had one of the cards in place.
01:02:51.260 --> 01:02:56.740 So they didn't, they were not able to gather any data on that, and out of the 140 cases
01:02:56.740 --> 01:03:03.780 that they documented, one case they said the person reported details about what was happening
01:03:03.780 --> 01:03:05.780 in the room when they were getting CPR.
01:03:05.780 --> 01:03:08.020 So I mean, to me, that's background noise, right?
01:03:08.020 --> 01:03:10.060 One out of 140, that's coincidence.
01:03:10.060 --> 01:03:15.540 That's just superficial similarity of what was reported and what was happening.
01:03:15.540 --> 01:03:16.540 It's ambiguous, right?
01:03:16.540 --> 01:03:21.060 It doesn't prove that the person's memories were happening when they were in the emergency
01:03:21.060 --> 01:03:22.900 room getting their CPR.
01:03:22.900 --> 01:03:28.420 So AWARE-2, so from their preliminary reporting, and this is like from Parnia, the guy who's
01:03:28.420 --> 01:03:34.260 running it and who would absolutely make the best case for his own data possible, no mention
01:03:34.260 --> 01:03:35.940 of anybody seeing the cards, right?
01:03:35.940 --> 01:03:38.660 So I think we can assume that that did not happen.
01:03:38.660 --> 01:03:41.300 And guess what the EEG showed?
01:03:41.300 --> 01:03:43.220 It showed brain activity during CPR.
01:03:43.220 --> 01:03:44.580 Well, there you go.
01:03:44.580 --> 01:03:48.580 So they failed both of the things that they were trying to find.
01:03:48.580 --> 01:03:52.660 They did not prove the experiences formed while they were in the emergency room getting
01:03:52.660 --> 01:03:56.760 CPR, and they did not prove no brain activity.
01:03:56.760 --> 01:04:02.300 So now they're doing the shuffle, they're dancing feverishly trying to parlay this into
01:04:02.300 --> 01:04:04.860 we identified something unique happening.
01:04:04.860 --> 01:04:06.420 No, you didn't.
01:04:06.420 --> 01:04:08.540 You showed nothing.
01:04:08.540 --> 01:04:13.100 You failed on the two primary outcomes you were looking for, and those are the only ones
01:04:13.100 --> 01:04:16.620 that mean anything, right?
01:04:16.620 --> 01:04:22.920 So again, we are left with no compelling evidence that NDEs or anything other than shit people
01:04:22.920 --> 01:04:26.700 remember when they wake up from having CPR, right?
01:04:26.700 --> 01:04:30.740 They still didn't prove that those memories weren't forming way later, and they didn't
01:04:30.740 --> 01:04:32.420 prove that there was no brain activity.
01:04:32.420 --> 01:04:38.020 There were spikes of brain activity during CPR.
01:04:38.020 --> 01:04:42.620 I'm not saying that that activity is what is causing the experience, because again,
01:04:42.620 --> 01:04:46.620 they haven't established that the experience is forming then.
01:04:46.620 --> 01:04:49.460 So we don't need to hypothesize that.
01:04:49.460 --> 01:04:55.180 All we could say is that for their hypothesis, they failed on both counts, and that's it.
01:04:55.180 --> 01:04:59.660 And this is the most rigorous study of NDEs to date, you know, even more rigorous than
01:04:59.660 --> 01:05:00.660 AWARE-1.
01:05:00.660 --> 01:05:01.660 So fine.
01:05:01.660 --> 01:05:08.260 It's always, this happens a lot with pseudoscience or things on the fringe where the actual data,
01:05:08.260 --> 01:05:12.380 the actual outcomes that they were looking for are negative, but they find some way to
01:05:12.380 --> 01:05:17.300 try to pretend like the study was positive because they're so invested in interpreting
01:05:17.300 --> 01:05:18.300 it that way.
01:05:18.300 --> 01:05:21.660 And instead of just saying, it was negative, the study was negative, the outcome measures
01:05:21.660 --> 01:05:23.660 we were looking for weren't there.
01:05:23.660 --> 01:05:29.900 Aren't there any rigorous, legitimate studies that are basically looking at what could account
01:05:29.900 --> 01:05:33.540 for individual experiences?
01:05:33.540 --> 01:05:34.540 So like, what did you have?
01:05:34.540 --> 01:05:35.540 What do you have in mind?
01:05:35.540 --> 01:05:36.860 There's lots of studies of like...
01:05:36.860 --> 01:05:37.860 Like hypoxia.
01:05:37.860 --> 01:05:38.860 Yeah.
01:05:38.860 --> 01:05:40.300 What happens during hypoxia?
01:05:40.300 --> 01:05:43.460 What happens during, you know, during drug exposure?
01:05:43.460 --> 01:05:44.460 Yeah.
01:05:44.460 --> 01:05:47.700 Qualitative experiences that people, like people who were interviewed after a hypoxic
01:05:47.700 --> 01:05:48.700 event, what did they experience?
01:05:48.700 --> 01:05:49.700 Yeah.
01:05:49.700 --> 01:05:53.140 And in fact, we have a lot of those episodes, you know, where they mostly come from?
01:05:53.140 --> 01:05:54.140 Pilots.
01:05:54.140 --> 01:05:55.140 Pilots.
01:05:55.140 --> 01:05:56.140 Fighter pilots.
01:05:56.140 --> 01:06:00.820 Fighter pilots will frequently accelerate, you know, pull Gs until they pass out.
01:06:00.820 --> 01:06:02.420 And guess what they report?
01:06:02.420 --> 01:06:08.860 They report pretty compelling NDE experiences, you know, all the elements are there.
01:06:08.860 --> 01:06:12.940 All the body sensation, all the elements are there.
01:06:12.940 --> 01:06:14.540 The tunnel vision.
01:06:14.540 --> 01:06:18.820 The feelings of kind of like dissociation, depersonalization.
01:06:18.820 --> 01:06:23.520 And those, they're there in other contexts as well, certain drugs that do that.
01:06:23.520 --> 01:06:28.560 And so the reason why you can have similar experiences in different condition is because
01:06:28.560 --> 01:06:37.140 the, what's provoking the condition, what's provoking the altered awareness is not what's
01:06:37.140 --> 01:06:39.580 producing the details of the experience.
01:06:39.580 --> 01:06:45.900 What's producing the details of the experience are the brain circuits that are shutting down.
01:06:45.900 --> 01:06:50.540 Like this is what you're, this is what it's like when you have some awareness, but these
01:06:50.540 --> 01:06:52.140 circuits aren't working.
01:06:52.140 --> 01:06:56.240 The circuit that makes you feel as if you're inside your body is not functioning.
01:06:56.240 --> 01:07:01.620 So you feel like you're floating outside your body and your brain always makes experiences
01:07:01.620 --> 01:07:04.500 seem real and seamless because that's how our brain works.
01:07:04.500 --> 01:07:11.300 If you have a memory of it, that memory will create the illusion of a real seamless experience.
01:07:11.300 --> 01:07:13.020 It just blows my mind that people don't see this.
01:07:13.020 --> 01:07:19.500 Like you can look at reports of what people experience when they're intubated in ICU and
01:07:19.500 --> 01:07:21.740 you have like really similar things.
01:07:21.740 --> 01:07:26.060 What people report when they first wake up from anesthesia and you have themes over and
01:07:26.060 --> 01:07:27.060 over.
01:07:27.060 --> 01:07:29.580 These are all variations on the same theme.
01:07:29.580 --> 01:07:30.580 Yeah, totally.
01:07:30.580 --> 01:07:35.480 Like, I mean, yeah, to you and me, Kara, it's blatantly obvious that these are just typical
01:07:35.480 --> 01:07:40.900 brain experiences from, you know, a brain that went through trauma was hypoxic and,
01:07:40.900 --> 01:07:45.900 or whatever was waking up slowly from an extreme event like that.
01:07:45.900 --> 01:07:46.900 Sure.
01:07:46.900 --> 01:07:49.220 You're going to have these weird experiences.
01:07:49.220 --> 01:07:52.500 One of the things they try to make hay out of is that some people report really vivid
01:07:52.500 --> 01:07:56.940 experiences like, well, how could their, their experience be more vivid when the brain's
01:07:56.940 --> 01:07:58.480 functioning less?
01:07:58.480 --> 01:08:01.900 It's because the majority of your brain is inhibitory, right?
01:08:01.900 --> 01:08:02.900 Yeah.
01:08:02.900 --> 01:08:04.900 So you're basically like almost seizing.
01:08:04.900 --> 01:08:05.900 Yeah.
01:08:05.900 --> 01:08:10.740 You're just not that it's not like you're seeing limits, limits the information.
01:08:10.740 --> 01:08:16.100 It's like, it's like when you're on LSD or something, you know, as people report really
01:08:16.100 --> 01:08:18.100 psychedelic vivid experiences.
01:08:18.100 --> 01:08:23.020 It opens everything up because all of that bloatware, all of that heavy processing that
01:08:23.020 --> 01:08:28.820 your brain does to see, is this real, you know, to have executive function, to make,
01:08:28.820 --> 01:08:32.720 to compare things with your memories and reality, none of that's working.
01:08:32.720 --> 01:08:36.860 This is like all lizard brain experiences, the straight jackets off.
01:08:36.860 --> 01:08:37.860 Yeah.
01:08:37.860 --> 01:08:41.620 So it's like, of course it's going to be vivid because it, and it may seem really intense
01:08:41.620 --> 01:08:44.100 because all of the dampeners are off.
01:08:44.100 --> 01:08:48.180 They're all down because that's what a lot of the processing that our brain does.
01:08:48.180 --> 01:08:49.740 It slows down the brain.
01:08:49.740 --> 01:08:54.180 It slows down our thought processes, but it adds all of the really important functions
01:08:54.180 --> 01:08:56.100 like executive function.
01:08:56.100 --> 01:09:00.160 But if you take that, strip that all away, you get these vivid psychedelic experiences
01:09:00.160 --> 01:09:02.460 that seem more real than real or whatever.
01:09:02.460 --> 01:09:06.860 But then you're like, well, and that's like what, I mean, it's not what, but delusions,
01:09:06.860 --> 01:09:10.460 hallucinations, like all of these positive symptoms.
01:09:10.460 --> 01:09:14.380 That's what that is, and it's hard to differentiate them from reality by definition.
01:09:14.380 --> 01:09:18.060 And then your waking brain tries to make sense of it all, right?
01:09:18.060 --> 01:09:23.140 And then it weaves it into a memory of something that's to me, the point that's so, so fundamentally
01:09:23.140 --> 01:09:27.760 important and important is that all these people who have these quote near death experiences,
01:09:27.760 --> 01:09:31.020 there's a particular pattern of what's happening in the brain.
01:09:31.020 --> 01:09:34.280 There is a particular experiential kind of pattern.
01:09:34.280 --> 01:09:36.000 And then what do we do because we're human beings?
01:09:36.000 --> 01:09:37.500 We make meaning of it.
01:09:37.500 --> 01:09:41.060 Oh yes, we don't like the chaos story.
01:09:41.060 --> 01:09:47.560 And so there's the, if you look at the details of NDEs, there are core details that are clearly
01:09:47.560 --> 01:09:52.460 related to brain phenomenon, like the tunnel vision and the out of body of experience.
01:09:52.460 --> 01:09:57.120 And then there's all the other details that are culturally specific.
01:09:57.120 --> 01:10:01.940 They overlay on the core experience, their religious beliefs.
01:10:01.940 --> 01:10:05.460 It is so blatantly obvious when you look at the actual data.
01:10:05.460 --> 01:10:11.820 So yeah, it's Steve, it's like, um, it's like waking, you know, you wake up and you hallucinate.
01:10:11.820 --> 01:10:12.820 What are you hallucinating?
01:10:12.820 --> 01:10:16.300 Well, that depends on, on, on your culture and your culture and what time you're in.
01:10:16.300 --> 01:10:17.300 Yeah.
01:10:17.300 --> 01:10:18.300 Yeah.
01:10:18.300 --> 01:10:21.940 Is there an alien sitting on your chest or a demon or a demon or a sea hag?
01:10:21.940 --> 01:10:22.940 Yeah.
01:10:22.940 --> 01:10:25.620 But, but the pressure is a neurological phenomenon.
01:10:25.620 --> 01:10:28.220 Your interpretation of it is a cultural phenomenon.
01:10:28.220 --> 01:10:30.180 It's the same thing with the NDEs.
01:10:30.180 --> 01:10:32.400 The out of body experience is a brain phenomenon.
01:10:32.400 --> 01:10:36.020 Your interpretation of that is a cultural phenomenon.
01:10:36.020 --> 01:10:40.460 And so it's, we're right smack dab in the middle of this is a traumatized brain, but
01:10:40.460 --> 01:10:44.620 Parnia is trying to say, if this isn't a trick of the brain, your data shows it's a trick
01:10:44.620 --> 01:10:45.620 of the brain.
01:10:45.620 --> 01:10:46.620 It's just ridiculous.
01:10:46.620 --> 01:10:47.620 Wow.
Who's That Noisy? (1:12:14)
01:12:13.660 --> 01:12:16.460
All right, Jay, it is Who's That Noisy? time.
01:12:16.460 --> 01:12:17.460 All right, guys.
01:12:17.460 --> 01:12:40.900 Let's see if I played this noisy.
01:12:40.900 --> 01:12:43.580 That is definitely a UFO landing somewhere.
01:12:43.580 --> 01:12:47.540 Oh, well, who got it right?
01:12:47.540 --> 01:12:52.340 So I had a lot of people guess on this one, but nobody won this week.
01:12:52.340 --> 01:12:54.180 But let me tell you some of the guesses that we got.
01:12:54.180 --> 01:12:56.100 So Shane Hillier wrote in, he said, hi, Jay.
01:12:56.100 --> 01:13:00.940 My guess this week is a backyard solar boiler and generator.
01:13:00.940 --> 01:13:06.620 And I can understand why you said that, because it does have kind of like a boiling noise
01:13:06.620 --> 01:13:09.220 in a sense, if you think about it.
01:13:09.220 --> 01:13:10.700 That is not correct, though.
01:13:10.700 --> 01:13:14.660 Frederick Niant said, strange noise, strange answer.
01:13:14.660 --> 01:13:20.620 A series of wide hollow bamboo trunks arranged in such a manner as to allow water to be poured
01:13:20.620 --> 01:13:24.480 down the middle, pushing air through precisely drilled holes, creating a bird whistle, which
01:13:24.480 --> 01:13:28.120 can be heard throughout the middle of the clip.
01:13:28.120 --> 01:13:29.260 That was a great guess.
01:13:29.260 --> 01:13:30.260 Incorrect, however.
01:13:30.260 --> 01:13:32.980 Visto Tutti said, this is a tough one, Jay.
01:13:32.980 --> 01:13:34.340 It could be so many machines.
01:13:34.340 --> 01:13:37.980 I'm guessing that it's a blender grinding peanuts into peanut butter.
01:13:37.980 --> 01:13:41.060 I wonder why you are so specific here with peanut butter.
01:13:41.060 --> 01:13:42.180 Why couldn't it be any nuts?
01:13:42.180 --> 01:13:44.820 But anyway, that is incorrect, but sounds delicious.
01:13:44.820 --> 01:13:46.940 Yeah, what, are you on a bias against cashews?
01:13:46.940 --> 01:13:47.940 Me?
01:13:47.940 --> 01:13:48.940 Yeah, right?
01:13:48.940 --> 01:13:49.940 What, you got a nut problem over here?
01:13:49.940 --> 01:13:53.300 So a listener named Philip Dejean wrote in, said, howdy.
01:13:53.300 --> 01:13:57.940 My guess for this week's noise is the sound of a fishing reel being spooled by a machine.
01:13:57.940 --> 01:14:02.780 And I can understand why that guess was submitted as well.
01:14:02.780 --> 01:14:08.180 I've heard fishing reels unspool very quickly, and they do have a weird sound to them.
01:14:08.180 --> 01:14:09.940 But anyway, nobody got it right this week.
01:14:09.940 --> 01:14:11.140 It was a tough one.
01:14:11.140 --> 01:14:14.000 I will tell you what this is, and then I'll play it for you again.
01:14:14.000 --> 01:14:20.540 This is a piece of chalk that has been dropped into a cup of water, and there is an underwater
01:14:20.540 --> 01:14:27.920 microphone, a hydrophone, that is recording the sound as the water, well, more importantly,
01:14:27.920 --> 01:14:31.860 as the air seeps out of the chalk.
01:14:31.860 --> 01:14:38.140 It is, it's essentially air leaving the piece of chalk in very, very tiny holes.
01:14:38.140 --> 01:14:42.180 So you have water going into the chalk and air leaving the piece of chalk.
01:14:42.180 --> 01:14:49.860 But anyway, listen to it again, now that you know what it is.
01:14:49.860 --> 01:14:56.500 Pretty cool.
01:14:56.500 --> 01:14:59.980 Cool.
01:14:59.980 --> 01:15:04.060 I know that one was very hard to guess, and I feel a little guilty because nobody guessed
01:15:04.060 --> 01:15:05.060 it.
01:15:05.060 --> 01:15:06.060 But it's such a cool noisy.
01:15:06.060 --> 01:15:07.060 I had to play it for you.
01:15:07.060 --> 01:15:08.060 You've got to throw some hard ones in there sometimes.
01:15:08.060 --> 01:15:09.060 You're right.
01:15:09.060 --> 01:15:10.060 Thank you, Steve.
01:15:10.060 --> 01:15:11.060 I feel very good now.
01:15:11.060 --> 01:15:12.060 All right.
01:15:12.060 --> 01:15:18.180 So I have a new one, a new noisy sent in by a listener named Lila B. And I think this
01:15:18.180 --> 01:15:19.180 one is really cool.
01:15:19.180 --> 01:15:20.180 I hope you like it.
01:15:20.180 --> 01:15:25.820 Also, Lila is a grade six student who's graduating primary school in a few weeks.
01:15:25.820 --> 01:15:27.460 So thank you for sending that in, Lila.
01:15:27.460 --> 01:15:40.420 Check this one out, guys.
01:15:40.420 --> 01:15:55.420 OK.
01:15:55.420 --> 01:15:57.300 This is not just a song.
01:15:57.300 --> 01:16:02.940 There is a very important detail that you need to tell me in order for you to get this
01:16:02.940 --> 01:16:03.940 one correct.
01:16:03.940 --> 01:16:07.780 Jay, I know exactly what that is.
01:16:07.780 --> 01:16:13.060 And I know exactly why Lila knows what that is and how she came by that sound.
01:16:13.060 --> 01:16:14.060 You do?
01:16:14.060 --> 01:16:15.060 I do.
01:16:15.060 --> 01:16:16.060 Oh, my God.
01:16:16.060 --> 01:16:17.060 I love it.
01:16:17.060 --> 01:16:18.060 OK, this is great.
01:16:18.060 --> 01:16:19.060 So next week.
01:16:19.060 --> 01:16:20.060 I'll reveal it next week.
01:16:20.060 --> 01:16:21.060 Next week, we will talk about the details.
01:16:21.060 --> 01:16:24.300 And Steve's like, and I know exactly where she lives and what she studied.
01:16:24.300 --> 01:16:30.340 So I'm assuming she came to it the same way I did, which is highly likely, or it's a massive
01:16:30.340 --> 01:16:33.780 coincidence because I just saw that a few days ago.
01:16:33.780 --> 01:16:34.780 I love coincidences.
01:16:34.780 --> 01:16:35.780 OK, great.
01:16:35.780 --> 01:16:36.780 All right.
01:16:36.780 --> 01:16:39.100 Well, next week, we will reveal this.
01:16:39.100 --> 01:16:42.740 If you think you know what this week's noisy is or if you have something cool that you've
01:16:42.740 --> 01:16:44.780 heard recently, you got to email me.
01:16:44.780 --> 01:16:48.580 Just go to WTN at the skeptics guy dot org.
New Noisy (1:15:11)
[_short_vague_description_of_Noisy]
Announcements (1:16:49)
01:16:48.580 --> 01:16:49.580 Stephen Novella.
01:16:49.580 --> 01:16:50.580 Yes, Arizona.
01:16:50.580 --> 01:16:51.580 Come on.
01:16:51.580 --> 01:16:53.980 They're still counting votes in Arizona.
01:16:53.980 --> 01:16:56.220 Hopefully they'll be done by the time we get there in December.
01:16:56.220 --> 01:16:57.220 That's right.
01:16:57.220 --> 01:17:02.740 Right before the show, Evan and I happened to log on first and Evan's like, hey, man,
01:17:02.740 --> 01:17:03.740 this show.
01:17:03.740 --> 01:17:05.900 I mean, we are like right around the corner of this show.
01:17:05.900 --> 01:17:09.620 Yes, it's you know, we are we are as we record this.
01:17:09.620 --> 01:17:13.460 We are just under one month away from this show happening.
01:17:13.460 --> 01:17:14.900 And I like what George said last week.
01:17:14.900 --> 01:17:18.740 George said this would make a great gift if you know anyone that listens to the show or
01:17:18.740 --> 01:17:23.980 enjoys the show or you want to take someone that you think would enjoy the shows that
01:17:23.980 --> 01:17:25.220 we're putting on.
01:17:25.220 --> 01:17:28.980 Use it as a Christmas present, an early, awesome Christmas present.
01:17:28.980 --> 01:17:34.020 Go to the skeptics guy dot org forward slash events and you can find out about the two
01:17:34.020 --> 01:17:37.160 different kinds of shows that we're going to be putting on in Arizona.
01:17:37.160 --> 01:17:41.740 We're going to be doing each one of these shows in Phoenix and each one of them in Tucson.
01:17:41.740 --> 01:17:44.840 We have a private SGU recording.
01:17:44.840 --> 01:17:49.260 It's called The Private Show Plus because we also give about two hours.
01:17:49.260 --> 01:17:55.740 It's four hours total of SGU goodness, four hours total, but two hours basically of us
01:17:55.740 --> 01:17:59.300 recording the show and two hours of us hanging out with you guys having fun.
01:17:59.300 --> 01:18:03.540 We have all sorts of activities and cool stuff planned.
01:18:03.540 --> 01:18:06.940 So please do join us for one of those live recordings.
01:18:06.940 --> 01:18:08.500 And then we have an extravaganza.
01:18:08.500 --> 01:18:10.360 This is a holiday themed extravaganza.
01:18:10.360 --> 01:18:14.820 And if you don't know what it is, the extravaganza is essentially it's a stage show where we're
01:18:14.820 --> 01:18:20.140 we do a lot of improv comedy bits where essentially George is trying to make us, you know, trying
01:18:20.140 --> 01:18:21.140 to have a lot of fun.
01:18:21.140 --> 01:18:24.400 But George really is trying to embarrass us as best he can.
01:18:24.400 --> 01:18:26.740 And he does it, by the way.
01:18:26.740 --> 01:18:31.460 You got to see Bob when Bob gets a little pissed off when we're when we're doing this
01:18:31.460 --> 01:18:32.460 show.
01:18:32.460 --> 01:18:33.460 Right.
01:18:33.460 --> 01:18:34.460 I love that.
01:18:34.460 --> 01:18:35.460 Sometimes there's a lot to be pissed off about.
01:18:35.460 --> 01:18:36.460 I know.
01:18:36.460 --> 01:18:41.160 But when Bob gets angry and he gets a little passive aggressive, I am like, we are hitting
01:18:41.160 --> 01:18:42.160 our stride.
01:18:42.160 --> 01:18:43.160 I wouldn't say flustered, just pissed.
01:18:43.160 --> 01:18:48.140 I'd say flustered.
01:18:48.140 --> 01:18:51.180 So you could you could please, if you're interested, please join us.
01:18:51.180 --> 01:18:55.380 Go to the skeptics guide dot org forward slash events for all the details.
01:18:55.380 --> 01:18:56.780 And I'm looking forward to seeing Kara.
01:18:56.780 --> 01:18:57.780 Thank you, Jay.
Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups
_consider_using_block_quotes_for_emails_read_aloud_in_this_segment_
with_reduced_spacing_for_long_chunks –
Email #1: _brief_description_ (1:18:59)
01:18:57.780 --> 01:18:58.780 All right.
01:18:58.780 --> 01:19:00.620 We're going to do one quick email.
01:19:00.620 --> 01:19:05.740 This one comes from Dan from Seattle, Washington, and he writes, I have an ongoing friendly
01:19:05.740 --> 01:19:06.740 dispute with someone.
01:19:06.740 --> 01:19:10.580 It boils down to what is the harm in following astrology?
01:19:10.580 --> 01:19:14.500 They loosely follow astrology for fun with a few friends, possibly as a running joke
01:19:14.500 --> 01:19:18.540 just to tease me and take the stance that it is pretty harmless.
01:19:18.540 --> 01:19:23.060 While I agree it's probably pretty harmless for most, my worry is that it could act as
01:19:23.060 --> 01:19:26.780 a sort of gateway drug to other pseudoscientific beliefs.
01:19:26.780 --> 01:19:32.260 Believing in astrology seems to demonstrate a disinterest at best or inability at worst
01:19:32.260 --> 01:19:37.600 in evaluating its scientific plausibility and the empirical evidence as to if it's actually
01:19:37.600 --> 01:19:43.700 a real phenomenon or put more broadly in the willingness to or ability to exercise certain
01:19:43.700 --> 01:19:45.660 critical thinking skills.
01:19:45.660 --> 01:19:48.660 He has a couple more paragraphs of basically making that same point.
01:19:48.660 --> 01:19:52.540 So he wants to know what we think about that is, do we really do we think that there are
01:19:52.540 --> 01:20:01.300 harmless pseudoscientific beliefs or is his formulation that it's brain poison more accurate?
01:20:01.300 --> 01:20:07.140 So I'm definitely far on the brain poison end of the spectrum, I think.
01:20:07.140 --> 01:20:10.860 So I could say what the evidence shows, first of all, for in case anyone listening needs
01:20:10.860 --> 01:20:16.580 to hear this, astrology is 100% pure superstitious pseudoscience.
01:20:16.580 --> 01:20:18.620 There is nothing to it.
01:20:18.620 --> 01:20:20.580 Yeah, it's like one of the worst.
01:20:20.580 --> 01:20:26.020 Yeah, it is like a classic, iconic example of a pseudoscience that's based on magic,
01:20:26.020 --> 01:20:27.020 on nothing.
01:20:27.020 --> 01:20:32.740 The idea is that the relative position of the stars as seen from the earth and the planets
01:20:32.740 --> 01:20:38.060 in relation to those stars has some influence on our personality and our fate, right?
01:20:38.060 --> 01:20:44.220 When of course there's no possible mechanism for that to be true and the relative positions
01:20:44.220 --> 01:20:46.700 are all subjective anyway.
01:20:46.700 --> 01:20:51.140 And I think I love how Carl Sagan put it, the obstetrician has more of a gravitational
01:20:51.140 --> 01:20:57.100 influence on you at the moment of your birth than Jupiter does.
01:20:57.100 --> 01:21:00.420 So there's literally zero plausibility.
01:21:00.420 --> 01:21:04.720 And the evidence for it is, again, it's a classic example, we use it as a classic example
01:21:04.720 --> 01:21:12.520 of retrofitting data because that's all they really have is they can retrodict why something
01:21:12.520 --> 01:21:15.060 happened if you look at the stars and interpret it the right way.
01:21:15.060 --> 01:21:18.220 It's all subjective and confirmation and bias, whatsoever.
01:21:18.220 --> 01:21:23.020 But anytime it's ever looked at under any kind of controlled, with good scientific controls,
01:21:23.020 --> 01:21:25.060 there's no effect there.
01:21:25.060 --> 01:21:28.920 So does believing in astrology rot your brain, right?
01:21:28.920 --> 01:21:33.120 That's basically the question, just to paraphrase.
01:21:33.120 --> 01:21:34.580 So I think there's a couple ways to look at this.
01:21:34.580 --> 01:21:39.920 So first of all, are people predisposed to believing in things like astrology?
01:21:39.920 --> 01:21:45.180 And does believing in astrology make you vulnerable to believing other kinds of nonsense?
01:21:45.180 --> 01:21:49.100 That's hard to control for, like you can't, like we're going to force you to believe in
01:21:49.100 --> 01:21:50.460 astrology and see what happens to you, right?
01:21:50.460 --> 01:21:52.220 You can't do that kind of study.
01:21:52.220 --> 01:21:56.780 So all the data is correlative, right, so we can do correlational studies.
01:21:56.780 --> 01:22:01.580 And what we do know is that if you believe in one pseudoscience, you are way more likely
01:22:01.580 --> 01:22:03.160 to believe in others.
01:22:03.160 --> 01:22:10.620 And we also know that believing in these pseudosciences does correlate with certain thinking styles.
01:22:10.620 --> 01:22:13.740 You're more intuitive and less analytical.
01:22:13.740 --> 01:22:19.760 And it also correlates with believing in conspiracy theories and lacking critical thinking skills.
01:22:19.760 --> 01:22:22.880 So it does correlate with all of these things.
01:22:22.880 --> 01:22:25.460 Does it cause it or does it result from it?
01:22:25.460 --> 01:22:27.380 That's the thing that we can't really say.
01:22:27.380 --> 01:22:33.340 But I think either way, you're certainly better not believing in nonsense, right, and believing
01:22:33.340 --> 01:22:34.820 in reality.
01:22:34.820 --> 01:22:39.220 And I think it's absolutely plausible, as he says, and he gets into this more later
01:22:39.220 --> 01:22:46.980 on, that if you regularly believe in pseudosciences, you develop certain habits of thought.
01:22:46.980 --> 01:22:50.100 Now I have personal experience to draw on.
01:22:50.100 --> 01:22:51.100 I think we all do, guys.
01:22:51.100 --> 01:22:54.100 Kara, I don't know, probably not so much for you, but when we were younger, we believed
01:22:54.100 --> 01:22:55.100 all this shit, right?
01:22:55.100 --> 01:22:57.600 When we were kids.
01:22:57.600 --> 01:22:58.600 Maybe not astrology.
01:22:58.600 --> 01:23:04.660 I don't know that I ever believed in astrology, but definitely UFOs, ESP, those kind of more
01:23:04.660 --> 01:23:07.220 science-y pseudosciences.
01:23:07.220 --> 01:23:11.740 I remember reading my horoscope and trying to see how it lined up with the girl that
01:23:11.740 --> 01:23:18.460 I liked in terms of her astrological sign, but that was it.
01:23:18.460 --> 01:23:23.060 So I remember being in that mindset, and it does affect how you think about things.
01:23:23.060 --> 01:23:27.700 And then eventually, when we learned about science and whenever we became critical thinkers
01:23:27.700 --> 01:23:33.900 towards really high school and college, we now think about things very, very differently.
01:23:33.900 --> 01:23:39.660 Same people, but we have very different habits and styles of thought as skeptics than we
01:23:39.660 --> 01:23:43.900 did as our younger true believers in pseudoscience.
01:23:43.900 --> 01:23:44.900 Science!
01:23:44.900 --> 01:23:45.900 Yeah.
01:23:45.900 --> 01:23:50.780 Were things differently?
01:23:50.780 --> 01:23:52.900 Could I be a pseudoscientist today?
01:23:52.900 --> 01:23:53.900 I don't know.
01:23:53.900 --> 01:23:54.900 Maybe.
01:23:54.900 --> 01:23:55.900 It's interesting to think about that.
01:23:55.900 --> 01:24:01.340 If my life had turned out differently, the influences on my life or whatever, if I didn't
01:24:01.340 --> 01:24:08.620 have the ability to get a degree in science, I could have been a different person today
01:24:08.620 --> 01:24:12.060 in terms of my critical thinking or skepticism, right?
01:24:12.060 --> 01:24:13.060 I suppose.
01:24:13.060 --> 01:24:16.340 I don't think there's a version of you that's a pseudoscientist, Steve.
01:24:16.340 --> 01:24:20.940 I'd like to think that to some degree, but we don't know that, and the fact that we believed
01:24:20.940 --> 01:24:24.420 in all this crap when we were younger means it's possible.
01:24:24.420 --> 01:24:31.100 I do think it's important not to instill, force people to defend nonsense, right?
01:24:31.100 --> 01:24:35.540 You don't want them to be like, find reasons to believe the things that they want to believe
01:24:35.540 --> 01:24:40.740 and to fend off scientific reputation and to fend off logic and analytical thinking,
01:24:40.740 --> 01:24:45.140 etc., as opposed to embracing those things and being willing to give up their beliefs.
01:24:45.140 --> 01:24:49.940 The same person, I think, could go either way, and most people go both ways.
01:24:49.940 --> 01:24:53.580 Of course, they compartmentalize, and they're skeptical sometimes, and they're gullible
01:24:53.580 --> 01:24:59.940 other times, so I think most people have the capacity to do either, so reinforcing the
01:24:59.940 --> 01:25:07.260 belief in pseudoscience can definitely have tremendous negative downstream effects, and
01:25:07.260 --> 01:25:12.580 reinforcing critical thinking and scientific literacy, and those kinds of beliefs can have
01:25:12.580 --> 01:25:14.540 massively positive effects.
01:25:14.540 --> 01:25:20.060 So we all know a lot of people who are not dumb.
01:25:20.060 --> 01:25:25.100 They're basically intelligent people, and they have the ability to think critically,
01:25:25.100 --> 01:25:33.260 but they have life experiences which they think is evidence for the paranormal, and
01:25:33.260 --> 01:25:37.080 so they're like, well, I know it's real because of this experience.
01:25:37.080 --> 01:25:38.220 How do you explain that?
01:25:38.220 --> 01:25:40.380 Something's got to be going on, right?
01:25:40.380 --> 01:25:46.900 And minus that experience, they probably would be more critical thinking.
01:25:46.900 --> 01:25:52.540 Of course, our goal is to get them to understand that experience through a skeptical lens,
01:25:52.540 --> 01:25:53.540 right?
01:25:53.540 --> 01:25:54.540 It's like, no, you didn't see a ghost.
01:25:54.540 --> 01:26:01.860 You were probably just hallucinating, or there's probably a hypnagogia, or we know somebody
01:26:01.860 --> 01:26:08.620 who was convinced that the world is paranormal because somebody tricked them with a Ouija
01:26:08.620 --> 01:26:10.540 board.
01:26:10.540 --> 01:26:14.540 Yeah, that was a go-to evidence for much of their life.
01:26:14.540 --> 01:26:18.940 It affected their life, how they think about the world and everything.
01:26:18.940 --> 01:26:23.940 So yeah, so bottom line is I think it matters, but the evidence is basically correlational,
01:26:23.940 --> 01:26:24.940 but it's pretty solid.
01:26:24.940 --> 01:26:26.220 There's a strong correlation.
01:26:26.220 --> 01:26:27.220 All right.
01:26:27.220 --> 01:26:28.220 Thanks, Dan.
01:26:28.220 --> 01:26:29.220 That's an interesting question.
01:26:29.220 --> 01:26:30.220 All right, guys.
Science or Fiction (1:26:32)
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | |
| Science |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|---|
Bob | |
Cara | |
Evan | |
Jay |
Voice-over: It's time for Science or Fiction.
Bob's Response
Cara's Response
Evan's Response
Jay's Response
Steve Explains Item #1
Steve Explains Item #2
Steve Explains Item #3
01:26:30.220 --> 01:26:34.660 Let's go on with science or fiction.
01:26:34.660 --> 01:26:44.260 It's time for science or fiction.
01:26:44.260 --> 01:26:49.740 Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fake, and I
01:26:49.740 --> 01:26:53.660 challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake.
01:26:53.660 --> 01:26:55.260 You have a theme this week.
01:26:55.260 --> 01:26:58.100 It's animal myths, animal myths.
01:26:58.100 --> 01:27:03.180 And again, just the statements are either true or fake as stated, right?
01:27:03.180 --> 01:27:04.980 Don't confuse yourself.
01:27:04.980 --> 01:27:05.980 Guys ready?
01:27:05.980 --> 01:27:06.980 Yes.
01:27:06.980 --> 01:27:07.980 All right.
01:27:07.980 --> 01:27:08.980 Here we go.
01:27:08.980 --> 01:27:09.980 Item number one.
01:27:09.980 --> 01:27:18.700 Daddy long legs are not spiders, but arachnids in the Opiliones order, they do not have venom
01:27:18.700 --> 01:27:19.700 or fangs.
01:27:19.700 --> 01:27:20.940 All right.
01:27:20.940 --> 01:27:26.140 Number two, sharks have a sense of smell about as good as other fish, equivalent to a drop
01:27:26.140 --> 01:27:30.140 of blood in an average sized swimming pool.
01:27:30.140 --> 01:27:35.340 They can detect blood from hundreds of yards, but not miles away.
01:27:35.340 --> 01:27:40.980 And item number three, the Alaskan wood frog does not actually freeze in the winter, but
01:27:40.980 --> 01:27:45.100 hibernates beneath the mud at the bottom of lakes and ponds.
01:27:45.100 --> 01:27:46.420 Who hasn't gone first in a while?
01:27:46.420 --> 01:27:47.420 Bob hasn't gone.
01:27:47.420 --> 01:27:48.420 All right, Bob, go first.
01:27:48.420 --> 01:27:49.420 Evan threw you under the bus.
01:27:49.420 --> 01:27:50.420 What the hell, man?
01:27:50.420 --> 01:27:51.420 You're welcome.
01:27:51.420 --> 01:28:03.940 Daddy long legs are not spiders, but arachnids in the Opiliones order, they're not spiders.
01:28:03.940 --> 01:28:05.620 I know that for sure.
01:28:05.620 --> 01:28:08.380 Maybe I shouldn't say that.
01:28:08.380 --> 01:28:09.380 Ignore that people.
01:28:09.380 --> 01:28:10.380 All right.
01:28:10.380 --> 01:28:13.860 So daddy long legs, yeah, I don't like them.
01:28:13.860 --> 01:28:14.860 Don't like them.
01:28:14.860 --> 01:28:18.500 They're just like wannabe spiders, but they do not have venom or fangs.
01:28:18.500 --> 01:28:19.500 All right.
01:28:19.500 --> 01:28:23.860 Let's go, let's go to two sharks have a sense of smell as good as other fish.
01:28:23.860 --> 01:28:26.820 Yeah, that sounds about right there and that they can't, it's not for miles, but hundreds
01:28:26.820 --> 01:28:29.620 of yards kind of jives with my understanding.
01:28:29.620 --> 01:28:33.660 Let's go to the third one, which I didn't even, wasn't even listening to when you said
01:28:33.660 --> 01:28:34.660 it.
01:28:34.660 --> 01:28:38.780 The Alaskan wood frog does not actually freeze, but hibernates beneath the mud at the bottom
01:28:38.780 --> 01:28:39.780 of lakes.
01:28:39.780 --> 01:28:40.780 Hmm.
01:28:40.780 --> 01:28:42.820 Does not actually freeze.
01:28:42.820 --> 01:28:47.900 Is that the classic one where they actually show it being, you know what?
01:28:47.900 --> 01:28:54.260 I remember seeing it like they were, it was pretty damn frozen, um, does not actually
01:28:54.260 --> 01:28:55.260 freeze.
01:28:55.260 --> 01:28:56.260 Yeah.
01:28:56.260 --> 01:28:57.260 I'm gonna say that's fiction.
01:28:57.260 --> 01:28:58.260 Okay.
01:28:58.260 --> 01:28:59.260 Kara.
01:28:59.260 --> 01:29:00.260 Uh, I think I agree with Bob.
01:29:00.260 --> 01:29:01.260 Daddy long legs.
01:29:01.260 --> 01:29:02.260 Of course you do.
01:29:02.260 --> 01:29:03.260 Spiders.
01:29:03.260 --> 01:29:04.260 I feel like, I don't know.
01:29:04.260 --> 01:29:07.260 I feel like a lot of these are things where I'm like, I kind of heard that once before.
01:29:07.260 --> 01:29:08.260 Yeah, right.
01:29:08.260 --> 01:29:09.260 So annoying.
01:29:09.260 --> 01:29:10.260 That's the idea.
01:29:10.260 --> 01:29:11.260 Let's trust that.
01:29:11.260 --> 01:29:12.260 Yeah.
01:29:12.260 --> 01:29:15.860 I don't, I have no idea if they, I don't think they're venomous, but they might have fangs.
01:29:15.860 --> 01:29:16.860 I don't think so.
01:29:16.860 --> 01:29:19.580 They're little, they have long legs though, but they're little.
01:29:19.580 --> 01:29:23.300 I like the shark one cause I feel like that's a gotcha one.
01:29:23.300 --> 01:29:27.060 Like they, but maybe it's the opposite of a gotcha.
01:29:27.060 --> 01:29:32.320 Cause I feel like the myth is that they're like crazy good at detecting blood, but maybe
01:29:32.320 --> 01:29:35.620 all fish are crazy good at detecting blood.
01:29:35.620 --> 01:29:40.880 And I don't know anything about the Alaskan wood frog, but some animals can freeze.
01:29:40.880 --> 01:29:45.180 Like they have kind of an anti freeze situation going on in their blood or something.
01:29:45.180 --> 01:29:48.780 So I don't know if wood frogs are animals like that, but sure.
01:29:48.780 --> 01:29:52.660 I'm going to go with Bob, I guess, and say that that one's a fiction and they can freeze.
01:29:52.660 --> 01:29:53.660 GWB.
01:29:53.660 --> 01:29:54.660 Okay, Evan.
01:29:54.660 --> 01:29:55.660 Yeah.
01:29:55.660 --> 01:30:00.220 I think I'm going to ride that train as well.
01:30:00.220 --> 01:30:08.660 I did not know this about the wood frogs and their freezing, but hibernating beneath the
01:30:08.660 --> 01:30:14.060 mud at the bottom of the lakes and ponds, I don't, there's a disconnect here somewhere.
01:30:14.060 --> 01:30:19.020 I'm not quite putting my finger on it, but something's not, or not right there.
01:30:19.020 --> 01:30:22.900 And yeah, I think the shark, but the shark thing, I will make note of this that that
01:30:22.900 --> 01:30:28.140 has never sat right with me as far as, oh yeah, the shark can, uh, you know, since you
01:30:28.140 --> 01:30:34.980 might as well, like what, how the ocean's a soup with so much going on and how could
01:30:34.980 --> 01:30:38.280 it possibly that just stretched credulity to me.
01:30:38.280 --> 01:30:39.500 So always has.
01:30:39.500 --> 01:30:41.920 So I'll go with the frog as well.
01:30:41.920 --> 01:30:42.920 And Jay wait.
01:30:42.920 --> 01:30:48.420 You're saying that you were having trouble believing that sharks could smell blood like
01:30:48.420 --> 01:30:49.420 that little.
01:30:49.420 --> 01:30:50.420 Miles away.
01:30:50.420 --> 01:30:54.100 That, that's, that's something I've heard a very, for a long time.
01:30:54.100 --> 01:30:58.780 I think that's been parroted or, you know, by people and I, I don't know that I've ever
01:30:58.780 --> 01:31:00.220 really agreed with that.
01:31:00.220 --> 01:31:05.300 Not that I've looked into it, but it just never really sat with me as being, oh, right.
01:31:05.300 --> 01:31:06.300 No.
01:31:06.300 --> 01:31:07.300 I'll go with the boys.
01:31:07.300 --> 01:31:12.580 I really think that there are frogs, I don't know, you know, the Alaskan wood frog, you
01:31:12.580 --> 01:31:16.180 could have named any frog here, Kermit, anyone.
01:31:16.180 --> 01:31:17.180 I just don't know.
01:31:17.180 --> 01:31:23.680 But I am fairly confident that there are frogs that fully freeze and they just have the biological
01:31:23.680 --> 01:31:25.380 mechanism to deal with it.
01:31:25.380 --> 01:31:26.900 So I'm going to say that one is the fiction.
01:31:26.900 --> 01:31:27.900 Okay.
01:31:27.900 --> 01:31:28.900 So you all agree.
01:31:28.900 --> 01:31:29.900 So I guess we'll take these in order.
01:31:29.900 --> 01:31:31.140 Uh, we'll start with number one.
01:31:31.140 --> 01:31:36.700 Daddy long legs are not spiders, but arachnids in the O'Billion ace order, they do not have
01:31:36.700 --> 01:31:38.140 venom or fangs.
01:31:38.140 --> 01:31:43.340 You all think that one is science and that one is science.
01:31:43.340 --> 01:31:49.880 That is the notion that they have, that they're the most venomous spider, but they can't penetrate
01:31:49.880 --> 01:31:51.340 human skin is nonsense.
01:31:51.340 --> 01:31:55.860 They, they're not venomous and, and they're not spiders as Bob said.
01:31:55.860 --> 01:32:03.100 There is, however, there's some people, they, they mistake a particularly long legged spider
01:32:03.100 --> 01:32:09.380 for a daddy long legs and then their common name is the daddy long legs spider.
01:32:09.380 --> 01:32:12.940 So there is a daddy long legs spider, but it's not what we think of as a daddy long
01:32:12.940 --> 01:32:13.940 legs.
01:32:13.940 --> 01:32:16.820 And the, and that one, that spider is not on the East coast.
01:32:16.820 --> 01:32:20.480 You may have seen it in California, Kara, but we don't get it on the East coast.
01:32:20.480 --> 01:32:22.900 So we've probably never even seen it.
01:32:22.900 --> 01:32:23.900 Interesting.
01:32:23.900 --> 01:32:28.220 But in any case, yeah, but the daddy long legs itself is in the, uh, it's an arachnid
01:32:28.220 --> 01:32:31.020 so it has eight legs, but it's not a spider and it has like, look at the body.
01:32:31.020 --> 01:32:32.980 It doesn't have a, you know, it has one body.
01:32:32.980 --> 01:32:33.980 Not two.
01:32:33.980 --> 01:32:34.980 Yeah, exactly.
01:32:34.980 --> 01:32:39.420 They're really freaky looking when you see him like a very, very close up, like zoomed
01:32:39.420 --> 01:32:40.420 in picture of it.
01:32:40.420 --> 01:32:41.420 It looks very alien.
01:32:41.420 --> 01:32:42.420 All right.
01:32:42.420 --> 01:32:43.420 Let's go to number two.
01:32:43.420 --> 01:32:46.900 Sharks have a sense of smell about as good as other fish equivalent to a drop of blood
01:32:46.900 --> 01:32:49.260 in an average sized swimming pool.
01:32:49.260 --> 01:32:54.300 They can detect blood from hundreds of yards, but not miles away.
01:32:54.300 --> 01:32:59.460 You guys all think this one is science and this one is science.
01:32:59.460 --> 01:33:00.460 Yeah.
01:33:00.460 --> 01:33:03.660 This is a recent news item, wasn't it?
01:33:03.660 --> 01:33:04.660 I don't know.
01:33:04.660 --> 01:33:07.700 I read it just a few months ago where they basically said exactly that.
01:33:07.700 --> 01:33:15.100 So Bob basically blew it by giving two items away, but that's all right.
01:33:15.100 --> 01:33:21.420 Only been doing it for 17 years, but it was gold, gold.
01:33:21.420 --> 01:33:25.140 So I picked the wrong person to go first and you did that.
01:33:25.140 --> 01:33:26.140 Learn that lesson.
01:33:26.140 --> 01:33:30.380 I don't know who's going to know what.
01:33:30.380 --> 01:33:35.140 I see what spiders and Bob, you remember I got an A plus plus in my fifth grade spider
01:33:35.140 --> 01:33:36.140 report, right?
01:33:36.140 --> 01:33:37.140 How many times do you have to hear that?
01:33:37.140 --> 01:33:38.140 It was only one plus, Bob.
01:33:38.140 --> 01:33:40.580 The other one was a little spider that crawled on your paper.
01:33:40.580 --> 01:33:44.140 You drag that old fact out your whole life.
01:33:44.140 --> 01:33:46.940 I got an A plus plus in spiders and science books.
01:33:46.940 --> 01:33:52.420 Jay, if you got an A plus plus in piss in a kindergarten, you'd be talking about it
01:33:52.420 --> 01:33:53.420 too.
01:33:53.420 --> 01:33:55.460 I love it.
01:33:55.460 --> 01:33:56.460 Okay.
01:33:56.460 --> 01:34:00.260 Is that Edvard Munch's, the screen?
01:34:00.260 --> 01:34:03.500 So that sharks can sense blood about one part per million.
01:34:03.500 --> 01:34:06.860 So it's about like a drop of blood in the swimming pool and yeah, they could detect
01:34:06.860 --> 01:34:08.660 that much diluted in the water.
01:34:08.660 --> 01:34:13.540 They could still pick it up, you know, hundreds of yards away, maybe 200, you know, maybe
01:34:13.540 --> 01:34:16.540 300 yards away, not miles.
01:34:16.540 --> 01:34:21.700 And the other thing is it takes time for the blood to diffuse through the water so that
01:34:21.700 --> 01:34:22.700 they could detect it.
01:34:22.700 --> 01:34:27.180 It's like you start bleeding and sharks from miles away are instantly heading your way,
01:34:27.180 --> 01:34:28.180 you know.
01:34:28.180 --> 01:34:29.180 Right.
01:34:29.180 --> 01:34:30.180 FTL.
01:34:30.180 --> 01:34:31.180 Speed of light.
01:34:31.180 --> 01:34:32.180 Right.
01:34:32.180 --> 01:34:33.180 All right.
01:34:33.180 --> 01:34:35.460 So all this means that the Alaskan wood frog does not actually freeze in the winter but
01:34:35.460 --> 01:34:39.500 hibernates beneath the mud at the bottom of lakes and ponds is the fiction because they
01:34:39.500 --> 01:34:41.140 do freeze in the winter.
01:34:41.140 --> 01:34:42.780 They literally freeze.
01:34:42.780 --> 01:34:44.460 They are frogsicles.
01:34:44.460 --> 01:34:49.340 Now the way that they survive that, they thought in this spring, just wake up and go about
01:34:49.340 --> 01:34:50.820 their business, you know.
01:34:50.820 --> 01:34:54.260 So they have antifreeze inside their cells.
01:34:54.260 --> 01:35:01.580 So the cells themselves do not freeze but the water between the cells does freeze.
01:35:01.580 --> 01:35:06.500 So the cells are not destroyed, they survive, but the frog does freeze.
01:35:06.500 --> 01:35:13.240 The water in the frog but around the cells freezes and they're just, you know, they survive
01:35:13.240 --> 01:35:17.580 all winter frozen and then they literally thaw out and wake back up.
01:35:17.580 --> 01:35:18.580 It's fascinating.
01:35:18.580 --> 01:35:21.520 They're hungover when they thaw out.
01:35:21.520 --> 01:35:23.780 You have hibernation sickness.
01:35:23.780 --> 01:35:24.780 Yeah.
01:35:24.780 --> 01:35:25.780 Cool.
01:35:25.780 --> 01:35:26.780 Pretty cool.
01:35:26.780 --> 01:35:27.780 Yo-do.
01:35:27.780 --> 01:35:28.780 Yo-do.
01:35:28.780 --> 01:35:29.780 Good job, everyone.
01:35:29.780 --> 01:35:30.780 Bob cheated.
01:35:30.780 --> 01:35:31.780 All right.
01:35:31.780 --> 01:35:32.780 Evan.
01:35:32.780 --> 01:35:33.780 We did.
01:35:33.780 --> 01:35:34.780 I killed it.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:35:32)
TEXT
– AUTHOR (YYYY-YYYY), _short_description_
01:35:34.780 --> 01:35:39.420 Give us a quote, Evan.
01:35:39.420 --> 01:35:43.740 This quote was suggested by a listener, Matthew from New Zealand.
01:35:43.740 --> 01:35:44.740 Thank you, Matthew.
01:35:44.740 --> 01:35:50.820 It is much easier to con people than to convince them that they have been conned.
01:35:50.820 --> 01:35:52.820 John Allen Paulos, mathematician.
01:35:52.820 --> 01:35:54.820 Ain't it the truth, man?
01:35:54.820 --> 01:35:55.820 Enumeracy.
01:35:55.820 --> 01:35:57.780 He wrote enumeracy.
01:35:57.780 --> 01:35:58.780 Did you read that, Bob?
01:35:58.780 --> 01:36:00.780 Yeah, I read it really good.
01:36:00.780 --> 01:36:01.780 I have to read that.
01:36:01.780 --> 01:36:03.260 I guess I got to put that on my list.
01:36:03.260 --> 01:36:05.380 I don't know that I've read one of Paulos' books.
01:36:05.380 --> 01:36:08.940 I bet you if that guy played science fiction, he wouldn't screw it up like you.
01:36:08.940 --> 01:36:09.940 Oh, yeah?
01:36:09.940 --> 01:36:13.120 Well, we'll have to have him on the show to find out, won't we?
01:36:13.120 --> 01:36:14.120 That is a good quote.
01:36:14.120 --> 01:36:18.780 It's sadly true, especially once they're convinced and people don't want to know that they've
01:36:18.780 --> 01:36:19.780 been conned.
01:36:19.780 --> 01:36:20.780 Oh, gosh.
01:36:20.780 --> 01:36:21.780 Right.
01:36:21.780 --> 01:36:23.460 But sometimes it flips.
01:36:23.460 --> 01:36:27.580 If you can somehow convince them, then they have to flip in their head.
01:36:27.580 --> 01:36:31.120 Then they feel like, I've been victimized, I've been lied to.
01:36:31.120 --> 01:36:34.940 But until you cross that line, they just don't want to think that they've been fooled.
01:36:34.940 --> 01:36:35.940 It sucks.
01:36:35.940 --> 01:36:36.940 Being fooled sucks.
01:36:36.940 --> 01:36:37.940 It's humility.
01:36:37.940 --> 01:36:38.940 It does.
01:36:38.940 --> 01:36:39.940 It's humility.
01:36:39.940 --> 01:36:40.940 Yeah.
01:36:40.940 --> 01:36:41.940 It comes down to humility.
01:36:41.940 --> 01:36:42.940 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:36:42.940 --> 01:36:44.780 They don't want to think that they figured it out on their own.
01:36:44.780 --> 01:36:45.780 That works.
01:36:45.780 --> 01:36:46.780 That's better.
01:36:46.780 --> 01:36:47.780 Yeah.
01:36:47.780 --> 01:36:48.780 Yeah.
01:36:48.780 --> 01:36:50.380 They're more accepting that way, definitely.
Signoff
S: —and until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.
01:36:50.380 --> 01:36:51.380 All right.
01:36:51.380 --> 01:36:53.220 Well, thank you all for joining me this week.
01:36:53.220 --> 01:36:54.220 You got it, Steve.
01:36:54.220 --> 01:36:56.620 Oh, it was nice to be enjoined with you.
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.
Today I Learned
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References
- ↑ Center for Inquiry: Kendrick Frazier, Longtime Editor of Skeptical Inquirer, Has Died at Age 80
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