SGU Episode 959

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SGU Episode 959
November 25th 2023
The first major installation of the Lunar Library is a 30 million page archive that flew on the SpaceIL Beresheet Moon lander, in 2019: It is now believed to be intact on the Moon.
SGU 958                      SGU 960
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
Science has the answer to every question that can be asked. However, science reserves the right to change that answer should additional data become available.
Mary Roach, American author
Links
Download Podcast
Show Notes
Forum Discussion

Introduction, Thanksgiving plans

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. Today is Wednesday, November 22^nd, 2023, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

S: So this is our Thanksgiving episode. We're recording the day before Thanksgiving, but it won't come out until a couple of days after Thanksgiving. So when you're hearing this, we will have had our Thanksgiving in podcasting time. What's everybody doing?

J: Well, as usual, I'm in Colorado with my wife's family out here, and we are cooking for two days. And I'm telling you what, I'm like, I've eaten more in the last two days than I have in the last two weeks.

B: Shocker.

J: And this is just the prep for the big meal.

B: It's a warm-up, man.

E: That's right.

B: Wow.

E: Getting ready. It's like a competition, what, food eater. They have to get themselves, it takes weeks to build it up to the time of competition.

S: Have you guys ever eaten so much Thanksgiving that you couldn't move?

C: No.

J: Bob, remember that year that you and I ate so much that we couldn't bend over?

B: Jay and I, not just bend over, Jay. Jay and I couldn't sit. We couldn't sit. We had to stretch out because sitting was bending too much. It was historic.

J: Yeah, right? That was pretty serious eat right there, man.

B: This year, Liz and I are having our first Thanksgiving at the house, at the homestead.

E: Nice.

B: And Steve and Joss and their daughter Autumn is coming. We're very excited. And Liz invited her parents, but her mom got COVID.

C: Oh no.

B: So that's not happening. But this year, it's cool because this is the first time ever that my house is now decorated for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween at the same time.

J: Oh my god Bob, new level man.

E: Oh my gosh, a new milestone.

B: It's so exciting. So I had to take down, of course, 90% of the Halloween decorations that happened.

E: What?

S: Which still leaves behind more Halloween decorations than most people have.

E: Most people own. Yeah.

B: True. So the TV room is Christmas. It's looking real good. It's going to look even better once I do some more work tomorrow.

S: Well, but Christmas is coming and all.

B: And then the dining room is Thanksgiving-ish. It's got definitely no Christmas in there. It's Thanksgiving. And then the library, it's Halloween, but it's Christmas Halloween. So I just left it up because that's how I had it decorated for Halloween. And it's got a Christmas tree. It's all creepy decorations and everything. It looks great. So I was like, hey, I'm going to leave it up there. So it's three holidays, one house, and I love it.

C: I am up in the Pacific Northwest. I came up to Oregon, drove up here a couple of weeks ago in my camper, camped on the way up.

J: How's that going?

B: Cool. How'd that go?

C: Amazing.

J: Tell me about your camper.

C: It's been so fun. I mean, it's been super cold ever since I got it, so I've only really winter camped. But it's been lovely, and I'm actually doing even more work on it while I'm here. I'm putting some roof rack bars and a solar tray, so it'll be solar ready, which means my panel on the roof will feed energy into my thousand kilowatt hour battery that is in the bed of my truck so that I can power my refrigerator and my lights and my heated blanket and anything else I need. Yeah, it's great.

E: I have a question. When somebody is mobile, portable like that, how does one order things and have it get to them?

C: Yeah. So lots of orders going to, as my friend calls it, her shipping and receiving station, which is their dining room table. I've just been shipping things to my friends up here. I've got two very, very dear friends up here in Oregon, one of whom just had a baby. So lots of domestic things going on around here. And oh, so for Thanksgiving, it's going to be really fun. I've been invited to a friend's friend's house and there will be, I think they said 20 people.

B: Whoa.

C: So it's going to be a really big dinner.

S: That's big.

C: Yeah.

E: That's nice.

C: And we're all contributing different things. I'm making my sweet potato casserole.

E: Cara, the casserole you're going to make, are you going to use your solar powered kilowatt generator to actually cook that up?

C: If it was stove top, I could because I have a whole hookup for that too. But no, I wouldn't be, I would be using propane for that. But no, I don't have a, I don't have a camper oven, just a stove, just like a burners and a jet boil. So no, I will be making it in my best friend's kitchen.

S: I'm going to be making the stuffing for Thanksgiving, which I've never made before. So we'll see how that goes.

E: What sort of bread, what sort of bread will be the base of the stuffing?

S: Cornbread.

E: Oh, cornbread.

B: Really?

S: Yeah.

E: So good.

B: Is that common?

E: Oh my gosh.

S: Well, we'll see how it goes.

E: Have you never had it, Bob?

B: I probably did, but it just doesn't, it's not ringing any bells.

E: You're in for a treat. Steve, don't make it well, okay?

S: I mean, I could follow a recipe.

E: You'll be the hero.

S: Yeah, it'll be fine.

C: And you're not actually supposed to put stuffing in the bird while you cook it, right?

B: No.

S: No.

C: You have to make stuffing separately.

S: Yeah. It's not hygienic.

C: It's a salmonella-ing.

S: Yeah. It's basically an incubator for bacteria.

B: That was a thing. Remember that? Geez.

E: Oh boy.

S: Why do they call it stuffing?

E: That's a good point.

C: What about you, Ev? You haven't given us your plans.

E: Oh, I will be with family. I'll be with my wife, Jennifer, her two sisters in town, and some other close relatives. Obviously, Rachel will be there too. And it'll be traditional Thanksgiving fare, which we love.

S: Yeah.

C: Who doesn't?

S: Going traditional. No typical Novella family three-course meal, starting with lasagne.

E: Right.

S: Back in the day, that's what I used to do.

J: Back in the day, yeah.

S: It was really three full meals. It was like three four-day worth of calories.

E: Oh my gosh.

B: It was nuts, man. We got to the point where we just started taking a three-hour break between courses. Like, how do you go from lasagne to...

E: Three-hour break between courses.

C: How do you have a lasagne as a starter?

J: Let's cut this shit here. We were never hungry after the first course. You just eat. You're sitting there. You're eating. You know what I mean?

S: Let's move on with the show.

What's the Word? (6:39)

• Rugae

S: Cara, you're gonna start us off with the, what's the word?

C: Actually, this is, yeah, this is a pretty great word given that we're talking about stretching one's stomach full of food. So this word was recommended by Casey Soska, listener Casey from Pittsburgh. "Hi, Cara, my wife and I were talking about the weird little bumpy ridges our dog has on her lips and realized not only did we not know what they're for, but what they're called. We found that they're called rugae or rugal folds and they help when gripping and manipulating food, but apparently rugae are in many parts of the body. Thought it might be interesting to see what the root is nd if the term is used elsewhere." So you heard me, I don't do this enough, I'm gonna spell it. So the singular of this word is ruga, R-U-G-A, and the plural is rugae or rugay. You'll sometimes even hear people pronounce it rugi or rugay. These are all American pronunciations, by the way. I feel like I need to be really clear about that after the last time when we talked about epochs.

S: After the epic travesty.

C: Yeah, after the epic tragedy, which in the UK is pronounced epoch, or I think it's epoch, yeah, and in Australia as well.

E: Yes, but we forgive them, right?

C: Well, we're the ones who changed it probably.

E: Oh, then you're welcome.

C: You're right, exactly. So ruga, R-U-G-A-E, which is the plural of ruga.

J: Aruga.

E: That's that old horn noise, that's right.

C: So this is a word that you often see in anatomy, but you also see it in botany, sometimes in, or not sometimes, often in zoology as well. This is a fold, a crease, or a wrinkle. And you'll even see it, the adjective form will be rugate. So something that is wrinkled, folded, or creased. And I first came across this word, I don't know about you, Steve, but I first came across it in my biology lessons when I was learning about the interior lining of the stomach. Because when the stomach shrinks down, it's got all these different rugae. And when it gets really, really full, they kind of stretch out and it doesn't look nearly as folded anymore. But we do see rugae throughout different portions of the body, like Casey mentioned when speaking about the bumpy ridges on their dog's lips. You sometimes see it in different plant matter, in botany. And so let's talk a little bit about the root of the word. So rugae is Latin. It comes from the Latin word ruga. So it's actually, the root of it is its definition, which is a wrinkle. They think it's like proto-Italian or Italic, but there's something interesting when we start looking at other words that are related, like rugged, because the words for wrinkle and crease seem to be related to rugged. So like a rugged landscape is also very similar to rugae. And then I love this. I never even thought about this, but here's another word that's related. It uses the same root, corrugate, corrugate, right? The rugated part of the cardboard. The corrugation is very, very similar in its root to rugae. But usually you do see that word mostly as listener Casey wrote about it in anatomy textbooks. And when you're learning about different parts of the body, especially parts that have, want to have a higher surface area than is allowed, you'll see a lot of different kind of folds and wrinkles, and that's where many receptors might be so that the surface area can be increased for absorption.

S: Yeah, I learned about it in anatomy, obviously. A lot of things in the body have rugae. Your palate does, right?

C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.

S: The roof of your mouth. All right, thanks, Cara.

News Items

S:

B:

C:

J:

E:

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

3D Printing Soft Robots (10:26)

• Printed robots with bones, ligaments, and tendons 

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then hide this parameter (move title inside the markup text)

First CRISPR Treatment Approved (17:12)

• First CRISPR Treatment Approval 

Omicron Update (34:08)

• Texas Implements a New Ban on Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates 
• Omicron, Now 2 Years Old, Is Not Done With Us Yet 
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  then hide this parameter (move title inside the markup text)

Lunar Library (48:25)

• Arch Mission Foundation Prepares Lunar Library II for December 2023 Launch 

(click to create redirect page)

then hide this parameter (move title inside the markup text)

Who's That Noisy? (1:03:19)

Answer to previous Noisy:

Scientists' estimate of T-rex sounds

New Noisy (1:06:51)

[mechanical/instrumental musical warbling with background scratching/fingering]

what this week's Noisy is

Questions/Emails/Corrections/Follow-ups

Follow-up #1: Fashion (1:21:17)

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Science or Fiction (1:31:47)

Item #1: Researchers have developed a hydrogel that will allow people with diabetes to inject their insulin once every several months, rather than every day. Item #2: Scientists find that the eyes communicate to the ears, causing the ears to make a sound which can be used to track eye movements. Item #3: A new study finds solar wind-derived molecular hydrogen trapped in Apollo lunar regolith samples.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Insulin-injecting hydrogel
Science	Eyes communicate to the ears
Science	Hydrogen in lunar regolith

Host	Result
Steve	win

Rogue	Guess
Jay	Eyes communicate to the ears
Bob	Insulin-injecting hydrogel
Evan	Insulin-injecting hydrogel
Cara	Insulin-injecting hydrogel

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

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:45:15)

Science has the answer to every question that can be asked. However, science reserves the right to change that answer should additional data become available.  – Mary Roach (1959-present), American popular science and humor author

Signoff

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

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

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Today I Learned

• Fact/Description, possibly with an article reference
• Fact/Description
• Fact/Description

References

Vocabulary