SGU Episode 947

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SGU Episode 947
September 2nd 2023
The saguaro is a tree-like cactus species that can grow to be over 12m (40ft) tall.
SGU 946                      SGU 948
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
G: George Hrab
Quote of the Week
Among all the geographic areas of the United States, the Southwest in general and Arizona, in particular, is blessed with a panoramic beauty that almost defies description. Only a limited number of poets, painters, and photographers have been able to do justice to her splendor.
Marshall Trimble, AZ official state historian
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
SGU Forum

Introduction, Live from Tucson, UAPs

Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. (applause) Today is Saturday, December 17^th, 2022, and this is your host, Steven Novella. (applause) Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody! (applause)

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy. (applause)

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys. (applause)

S: Evan Bernstein...

E: Good evening undisclosed location! (applause)

S: And George Hrabb...

G: Oh, hi! (applause)

S: So we are recording, as the listeners can probably tell in front of a live audience, here in Tucson, Arizona. (applause) Now you might think it's warm in Arizona. (laughter) You'd be wrong. It's December, but yeah, we knew it was going to be hot. But it was pretty chilly today. I'm looking at a room of people wearing coats and scarves.

J: I've been to Phoenix many times, always in the summer. I actually expected it to be like 60s. High 60s maybe. But yeah, it's cold.

G: Steve, I got to say, like many people, I watched the Beatles get back special last year, and I was yelling this town's name at one point because they're writing the song, Get Back, and they're trying to think of what goes with Tucson, Arizona, something left, something Arizona, something. I'm yelling, Tucson, Tucson, Arizona, the lyric is, come on, Paul, come on, John. And then they do it and you go.

B: Nice, nice.

G: And here we are, Tucson, Arizona.

B: That was a great documentary.

G: Unbelievable.

B: I want to watch it again. It was so amazing.

G: I have a question. Since we are in a hotel here, how do these car keys work? Car keys, card keys work?

S: They're magnetic.

B: You press them against a plate.

G: You're magnetic. Where's the, like, and then what?

C: So a magnet is...

G: No, I know, I know, but like, isn't it an RFID chip or what is it? Is it a chip in here? It's super thin, right?

E: Yep. Flexible.

J: You just ruined that key.

G: But is it a chip or is it a magnet thing?

J: It's a chip. That chip has a, like an ID number that the reader has to be matched with.

G: How thin and tiny is this chip that's in here?

E: About that thin.

G: But I don't even, like, I was trying to peel it apart. I was trying to see if it was like...

E: Don't do that.

J: George, it's definitely inside the plastic and it's super small. It doesn't need to be big.

G: So not magnets?

J: No, it's not magnetic.

G: So they used to be magnets. Oh, you used to have a strip.

C: Well, I think they used to have a strip.

S: The reader was magnetic.

C: Right, you used to swipe them.

S: Is the reader magnetic? It's a lot, well, so this is what happened. Bob and I are staying in the same room. I get there first. My card key doesn't work. And they literally put me in the room that was as far away from the front desk as you can possibly get it.

C: Somehow they did that for all of our rooms.

G: Because they knew that was the party room.

S: So then I had to go all the way back, tell them my card key isn't working. They reprogram it. I go back and it still doesn't work.

B: Meanwhile, I went there and tried my key and that didn't work.

S: So then we had to go back again. But we figured out, Bob and I did a little experiment. We tried our key on another door and a red light beat came up. And then we tried it on our door and no lights. So the keys were the problem. The door was broken. And then they said the battery must be dead. Like what? They were like, so wait a minute. Every door in this hotel has a battery in the reader? And some jackass has to go around changing all of those batteries? How frequently do they go out? Bob was like, didn't they hardwire? Yeah, but where would the wire go? It's a door.

C: Yeah, you couldn't. Yeah, it's a battery. Yeah, my door at home has a keypad and it's battery also. They last pretty long. I mean, I think if you use lithium ions, they last longer.

B: I thought it'd be more than six months. I would figure out maybe it's like 12 or 16 months.

C: It probably depends on the model.

S: But what is there 1,000 rooms in this hotel that means it's got to be going dead every day?

J: That's why they have the maintenance guys.

E: They're supposed to keep track of that stuff, like the heat.

S: The best part of the transition from the incandescent to LED bulbs is I'm not changing bulbs every single day. I was changing them all the time, just in my house. You got to get up on a stool or whatever. Now it's like I haven't changed a bulb in years.

E: Oh, gosh.

S: It's wonderful.

E: 17 years.

S: So this morning, breaking news, this show's coming out in a while, but we have to talk about it. The Pentagon had an updated announcement about their UFO investigation program, their UAPs, right?

E: Oh, finally.

S: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

E: Here it is.

S: A big announcement, huge announcement. They're going to be putting out NFTs of UFOs. (laughter)

E: Oh, wow.

B: Superhero UFOs.

C: Win a chance to win a trip to the Pentagon.

S: The UAP now stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, as opposed to Aerial Phenomena.

B: It's the same initialism.

S: Same initialism. Very clever.

B: Which is a good one.

E: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. How nebulous can you get?

S: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. I know.

C: But that's the point.

S: That's the point.

C: We don't know what it is.

S: The reason for the change is that they also want to investigate anomalies in the water. So they're not aerial. And what they call transmedium phenomena, so that things that go from the water to the air or vice versa.

B: Or space in the air.

S: Even though they haven't found any yet, they wanted to have a name ready to go in case they do find it.

E: Very forward thinking.

S: Yeah. They also said, by the way, we have extreme methods of surveillance. Just so you know. We can't tell you what they are. And enough said. But you know.

B: That was it.

S: But you know.

E: George, that key you were holding up earlier? Just saying. I'm just saying.

G: Do you have extreme methods of surveillance?

S: But think about it.

G: But aliens are not real?

S: Think about Google Earth. Think about what the military must have. Right? And for decades they've had this crap.

B: And satellite coverage.

S: There are spaceships flying around and they don't know about it.

E: I'm curious, anyone in this audience ever work for government agency?

S: Or currently working for government agency.

E: Are there things that we at the public have absolutely no clue about? Thumbs up. Thank you very much. That's all we need to know.

B: Can we interrogate you? I mean, talk to you later?

S: Hey, we consulted for the CIA.

E: Yes, we did.

B: That was cool.

S: We legit did. Some people were not happy about that. But we're like, well, yeah, we can work for the government.

G: It was jst a mailman, isn't it?

C: A mailman for the US Air Force.

G: That's right.

S: There's a third thing that I pulled out of their announcement. And that was, they said, regarding whether or not we've identified any alien activity on Earth, no. (laughter) The bottom line is, no.

E: Which is better than them leaving the question unanswered. Because that's the space in which all the kooky people operate. That is their home base, right?

S: But now they move over to the government's lying. So it's not like it shuts them down. They just change their narrative slightly.

B: It never shut them down.

Special Report: P-22 puma put down (7:25)

C: So Steve, I have a, there's something else that was actually 30 minutes ago that was just announced. It's a very sad thing. So I want to get it over with at the top of the show. But I feel like if we don't talk about it, I'm not doing somebody who's been very close to me in my life, as an Angelino, justice. But for those of you who are actually from Arizona, then you may keep up with the news in California about our resident mountain lion, P-22.

E: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: He was just euthanized about 30 minutes ago.

S: Oh, P-22.

C: We kind of knew that something was coming. We darted and captured him a couple of days ago. He's been increasingly acting out, erratic. He's much older than anybody expected him to live. He's been alone in Griffith Park now for many, many years. He was discovered soon after I moved to LA. And an adult male mountain lion usually needs 200 square miles at least to roam. And he's been roaming in about, I think, eight square miles for years.

E: So it's practically captivity.

C: Yeah, but he chose it, right? So he escaped the Santa Monica Mountains, which most of them do. They cross several freeways to get to whatever place they want to roam. He chose to stick around in Griffith Park with no mates and no other members of his species at all. And he lived pretty, well, I wouldn't say successfully, but he was doing well for a while. But within the past few months he's been acting out, he approached a person and ate their chihuahua, which was problematic. He had previously eaten a koala at the zoo, which is hilarious. And nobody was really that upset about that because they left the koala out. But the fact that he was moving more into residential areas, the fact that he was unafraid to approach people was worrisome. They darted him, captured him. He was severely malnourished. He had a little bit of mange. It looks like he had been hit by a car and they don't think that he's going to, or they didn't think that there was a good way to recover him safely. So they opted, which was the right choice, but a very sad choice because it's the end of an era in Los Angeles. Oh yeah, P22 is a hometown hero. And he is the reason, actually I should give a big shout out to my friend Beth Pratt, who is the California lead of the National Wildlife Federation, who really single-handedly, her and her team are responsible for giving P22 an identity, like a Facebook page, and they really helped draw attention to the problem of non-connectivity of wildlife in LA. And so, but because of that, we have successfully, there's been enough money raised to build a wildlife crossing at the Santa Monica Mountains so that we can increase connectivity among these animals, which is a really big deal. It's not built yet. Obviously it's too late for P22, but.

G: Why was that his name?

C: Oh, so Puma 22. Yeah, so they're all collared in the order that they were captured and collared.

B: So why not a better name?

C: We did, we did. We did a drawing. Everybody voted in LA. And P22 won.

S: Oh yeah?

C: Yeah, like they put out, let's name him a beloved name, and people voted on names, and people wrote in P22 because they knew him as P22. That's his name.

S: It also makes him sound like a droid.

C: He's badass. Yeah, he was badass. And so, yeah, Puma is actually one of these cool species names where I think it's, in North America, in the English language, it's the animal that has the most different names for the same animal. It's like Puma, Mountain Lion, Panther, Cougar, Catamount, yeah, that's all the same species.

G: That's all the same animal?

C: Yeah.

G: Wow.

C: I know, it's cool.

G: Oh, that's cool.

C: Yeah, so P22, we will miss you, and we love you.

S: Yeah, we definitely have to learn to live more seamlessly with wildlife, and the corridors is critical. We've isolated them. They can't mate. They can't roam around.

E: The ones they have in Europe are amazing. These entire land bridges that go over there.

C: That's what we're building. In LA, yeah.

E: Oh, they're incredible. Look them up on YouTube, they're amazing.

C: That's incredible. Yeah, look up Liberty Canyon Crossing. That's the one that we're building.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

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

Toughest Metal (11:26)

• This Alloy Is The Toughest Known Material on Earth, And It Gets Tougher in The Cold 

Eyewear from Coffee Grounds (18:42)

• Ukrainian Eyewear Maker Continues to Spin Coffee Grounds into Frames 

News Items, continued

Water Worlds (51:59)

• Ocean worlds around red dwarfs … common? 

Psychic Fraud (1:00:43)

• The Wild Story of the Psychic, the Sheikh and the $90 Million Diamond Heist 

Special Segment: Rogues' Expert Advice (1:05:37)

Evan on tax scams

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Science or Fiction (1:39:56)

Theme: Arizona Item #1: Other than a few stray plants, Arizona is the only state in the US with the famous saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea). Item #2: With 3,928 peaks and summits, Arizona is considered the most mountainous state of the 48 contiguous states. Item #3: Arizona is the most venomous state in the US, with the only venomous lizard, the gila monster, 13 species of rattlesnake, scorpions, africanized bees, a venomous centipede, and the insect with the most painful bite, the tarantula hawk.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Most mountainous state
Science	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Science	Most venomous state

Host	Result
Steve	sweep

Rogue	Guess
George	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Cara	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Evan	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Bob	Only state w/ saguaro cactus
Jay	Only state w/ saguaro cactus

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:52:15)

Among all the geographic areas of the United States, the Southwest in general and Arizona, in particular, is blessed with a panoramic beauty that almost defies description. Only a limited number of poets, painters, and photographers have been able to do justice to her splendor.  – Marshall Trimble (1939-present), American author, singer, professor, and Arizona's official state historian

Signoff

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

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

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