SGU Episode 738
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| SGU Episode 738 |
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| August 31st 2019 |
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"Comparing natural dental structures to fossilized teeth reveals fascinating evolutionary insights." |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
"To me science describes a world far more interesting than any psychic fantasy. It's a good world, not perfect, but it's ours, and we better learn to live with it the way it is." |
James Randi |
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| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro[edit]
Voiceover:You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.
US#01:Today is Friday, July 12th, 2019, and this is your host, Steven Novella.
S:Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
U:Hey everybody.
S:And we have a special guest this week, George Robb. So we are at Nexus 2019. This is our private show recording that we're doing. We're recording on July 12th, but this episode is going to air probably in early September when we are at DragonCon. So it'll be about six weeks or so delayed. That may be why some of the news items we're talking about. The show will be back when the world still existed, basically. Back six weeks ago. Before that thing happened. Remember when that thing happened two weeks ago? We didn't think it would get any worse and then it got worse. And it just kind of kept getting worse. But this show was fun.
US#04:Remember that show we did six weeks ago? Before The Thing? We're having fun now, before The Thing happened. The Thing? Yeah, but, well, it's good. If only we knew. Yeah. That we would have eaten more ice cream. It's true, yeah, yeah, yeah. Screw exercise, right? Some would say we should have known. Some would say. Some would say. Some would say. Could have known. Yeah. How are you, Steve? That's good. I did three workshops yesterday. No, you did not. I did.
J:What were they?
US#04:What were all three? So George and I did Stump the Skeptics. You did that one.
B:You did that one. I was in the room.
S:I misread that one. I thought that was Hump the Skeptics. Hump the Skeptics. And then Jay, Brian, and I did one on Media Tropes of Science and Scientists. That was good. That was fun.
J:And then I did one on How to Be a Skeptical Health Consumer. That's important. Yeah. Good. The audiences were all great.
S:My second one was me and Brian's best picks in animation, which was probably better than yours.
C:What was number one, Jay? What was number one animated pick for you guys?
S:Do you have a number one? We didn't.
J:I mean, it's hard to say because there's so many that we love. Okay, never mind.
S:My standout for recent stuff is Moana.
J:Moana was an absolute genius piece of work from the music to the animation, the ocean, and the hair, the facial expressions. Moana also has that incredible lava demon. I don't know if you've seen it, but there's a lava demon in that show that actually was a little scary. It was scary the first time I saw it. Like, damn. Yeah, well done. And the rock was in it, too. Yeah, I'm sorry. Right. Really? More like than Coraline or like any, like the Spirited Away? Come on. They were all on the list. Spirited Away blows away anything Disney put out, let's face it.
S:Well, I guess The Nightmare Before Christmas, that we did include those on there, but yeah, that's got to be my all-time... I wouldn't say Disney, I wouldn't say it blows away Pixar movies. Pixar? Come on. Yeah.
J:It's a different thing. It's a different thing. So this was yesterday, right? Today.
B:Don't you understand, Cara, that six weeks ago the world went to shit? We need to reminisce about all the movies.
C:The films we lost. All right, so we do have some really interesting news items to talk about on this show.
News Item #1 - Extragalactic Exoplanets (04:03)[edit]
C:All right, so we do have some really interesting news items to talk about on this show. Bob, this one's amazing.
J:So exo-galactic exoplanets. Yeah, this one has some interesting possibilities.
S:So scientists are claiming that gravitational waves could potentially be used to not only detect exoplanets, but to detect them in other galaxies. Let that bounce around inside your head for a little bit.
B:Who knows? Who doesn't know? Who knows what gravitational waves are? You have to clap. You listen to the show because I've talked about it about 30 times, but I'm going to go over it again real quick. Gravitational waves, Einstein predicted this in 1916 from his general relativity theory. It's basically ripples in space-time itself that propagate out from amazingly intense events like colliding black holes or colliding neutron stars. So these are huge events that actually ripple through space-time and travel at the speed of light forever. But Bob, is it fair to say that smaller events also make gravitational waves, but they're just too small to detect? Yeah, any time you've got mass moving and doing something, you're going to probably create them. They're only detectable when you get to the black hole colliding level. Well yes, but this is right.
S:As of right now we can only detect them when you have huge masses colliding.
B:But these new devices that are coming out should be able to detect other types of events with different frequencies of gravitational waves. So right now we've got LIGO, that's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. We've got a couple of LIGO setups that can detect Today we're going This is the new idea. binary white dwarfs in orbit around each other in a tight orbit so that that motion that you know the mass of a white dwarf is is we're going it's the mass of the sun say compressed down to the earth and they're in orbit around each other so that's something that emits detectable gravitational waves at least hopefully LISO should be able to detect that so the idea is that A planet could be in orbit around these binaries. So what they say we should do is use LISA to detect thousands of these orbiting binaries. And they will have a specific signature, but if there's a planet or multiple planets in orbit around that, it should modify the gravitational wave to such an extent that it's detectable. So we can say, look, this is a gravitational wave of orbiting white dwarfs, but there's a little anomaly to it, there's a little adjustment to it, and that's probably caused by a planet. So it would only be able to detect exoplanets at that distance if they're orbiting binary white dwarfs. Right. Well, that's not the main function of LISA. Hopefully LISA has other uses. Yeah, obviously.
S:But this is like, hey, using LISA, we can detect this stuff. Can I ask a couple questions? Yeah. Just one. Alright, so you said other galaxies. Yeah. Right.
B:So I can't wrap my mind around this. Like Andromeda. Andromeda might be too far away. They're talking about... Oh, like dwarf galaxies? No, they're talking about things like, first off, the entirety of the Milky Way, essentially, which is huge, because when we detect exoplanets now, we're not detecting all of the Milky Way.
J:It's relatively close by, generally, and we cannot detect huge swaths of the Milky Way.
B:And also they're saying, Welcome to You have a system with two binary white dwarfs that actually still has a planet orbiting both of them. I mean, how do you get to the two closely orbiting white dwarfs? Well, that's just it. Theory does not say that this scenario cannot happen.
S:It doesn't rule it out. It's not ruled out by physics. Right, right. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Cara Santa Maria, and Evan Bernstein.
B:Can planets that are relatively close, can they somehow survive? We're not 100% sure what the survivability is and exactly where you need to be. Jupiter should survive. So Jupiter would, yeah, the outer planets would survive, but what about some of the inner planets? So it could help us extend our theory of planetary evolution. Can some of these planets survive better or worse than we think? Or perhaps there's a second generation of planets that kind of can inhabit Bob, the LIGO can detect, like, a wave which is less than the width of a proton, apparently? Something like that? Yes. The most sensitive device, I think, ever created. How much more sensitive is LISA going to be as compared? Well, we're talking a 1.5 million mile, it's not sensitivity's part of it, but as I learned yesterday from my friend Leonard, that it's not just, it's extra sensitive, it's designed to be able to detect a specific frequency, and that's a frequency of, say, orbiting white dwarfs, whereas LIGO, Earth-bound LIGO, is sensitive to the specific frequency of black holes colliding. And so, for me, one of the holy grails of gravitational wave astronomy is detecting The very first moments after the Big Bang going beyond the cosmic microwave background radiation that we can't get past now. And so it's kind of like a new window into the universe, which is what makes gravitational wave astronomy so amazing. It's a new branch of astrophysics that opened up in 2015 when they made that first discovery. So it's really such a breakthrough that I compare it to CRISPR and what CRISPR has done to genetics is what I think gravitational wave astronomy is going to do to astronomy. It's just a whole new window. And this is just a side, this is just a prediction by some scientists. Yeah, we may be able to detect exoplanets. Jupiter, you know, Jupiter's scale and higher, not, unfortunately, not much smaller than that. But if you imagine detecting planets in the large maximum cloud, it's just amazing and unanticipated. I never thought that we would be able to do that. Right. Are there any, who knows what else we could do with gravitational wave astronomy in the future. Are there any laws of physics that need to be broken
US#04:This is probably a wavelength limit.
B:You said that they're...
J:That'll be our biggest instrument ever created by mankind.
B:If you count that as one thing. Yeah, the sun is 93 million miles away, so that gives you some context. I have one more question on this, Bob.
J:Has anyone made a scale model of LIGO out of LEGOs?
S:So it's amazing what paleontologists can tell from a single tooth.
News Item #2 - Denisovan Teeth (12:32)[edit]
S:So it's amazing what paleontologists can tell from a single tooth.
S:The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella,
US#00:But I didn't realize that there's only been, let me see, one, two, three, four, five, six Denisovan specimens ever discovered. And they're all just, it's a toe bone, a couple teeth, a partial jaw bone. That's it. That's all we have. Can you describe what they are?
S:So they're hominins, they're homos, early genus homos, and the 600,000... They may have all been Sherpas, right?
C:They adapted to high altitudes. That's one hypothesis. There's a lot of the fossil evidence comes from Asia. So it's a different region of the globe where the Denisovans were. And we've known for some time now the way that we know that we have admixture with Neanderthals. We've known for some time there's some genetic information. That's it for today. So modern humans have two roots, but there's some variation. Sometimes it's a, it's a mutational variation, but the rate of a three root molar in modern humans is around 3.5% of the population in Europe and Africa. But in Asia, the rate is upwards of 40%. So we're saying this is a link to... So these researchers seeing this tooth are making the claim, not based on genetic evidence, but based on morphological evidence, that there is more Denisovan admixture in these Asian... I had one when they pulled my wisdom teeth out. You had a triple? I only had three wisdom teeth and one of them was a triple. Oh, interesting. Yes, that's a low, really low occurrence. So is it magical then? I think it might be. Your mouth stone might be magical. Could you say that his was more of a mutation, like Jay's a mutant? Hard to say. But that's the interesting thing, and some of the researchers who are speaking out, not speaking out in the media, it's not some big controversy, but the people who have said, not so fast, this could be a mutation, we have very few specimens, but it seems to be the case that The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, In the same region. So that's why they think it was probably an ad mixture thing and that it didn't develop within the homo sapien line.
B:So it's good evidence, but they need to now look at the genetics and they need to now obviously wait and see if they find more specimens.
C:But it's a really good... Do these have denisobins or modern humans? Both. Of modern humans. If they can figure out the gene that would have accounted for that. Oh, the teeth have DNA. Yeah, they're not that old. Let me see, how old is this tooth? The nerves in the teeth probably have DNA, right, but not the tooth itself. The pulp. Yeah, the pulp in the tooth. 160,000 years old. And if you look at actually the eight specimens that are out there, yeah, the DNA has been investigated in almost all of them. One of them was so degraded that they could only do like protein analysis, but they've been able to do DNA analysis of most of the teeth and bones that have been found. That is really cool. If they didn't pull that tooth, I might have developed mutant powers. You might have. Because I'm pretty sure that Denisovans had mutant powers.
B:I think that's how that works.
C:This is weird because I like teeth and I like teeth. He was jealous when I told him I was doing a teeth research. He's like, Jay, I have a tooth news item. I'm like, what the fuck? That's my domain.
J:We all have mutant powers. I can digest lactose. That's true.
C:I have that too. Yeah. And Steve's a super taster. Yeah. I am too. It's not a good mutant power. I've got you all beat. I'm immune to caffeine. Yeah, so you say. So you say. So I say, so I say, I've done experiments on this and he's like, I did an experiment for a month. I did an experiment, I quit caffeinated coffee for an entire month. I had no symptoms of no headaches, nothing.
J:So it's totally subjectively symptom based. I thought he was like, you should have done it for six weeks.
C:I'm like, oh, come on, really? Yeah, but the odd thing about this is Bob doesn't drink it, he pours it on himself.
J:And I absorb it through my skin.
C:Some people do that. No, but Bob legit, you blow my mind because I've developed my whole, I quit caffeine just like Steve did because I don't sleep well and caffeine is like the very first thing that a doctor will say is, stop drinking caffeine. People say to me, oh yeah, I can't have caffeinated coffee. It's three o'clock in the afternoon.
S:I'm like, are you kidding?
B:I could drink a pot of coffee at midnight and go right to bed.
C:Yeah, we met last night at 1030 and you were drinking coffee.
B:But I successfully talked, Bob, into actually going to decaf. Did you? Caffeine's a chemical, why just... Well, and you said that it's the same for you, decaf. Yeah, if it's irrelevant, why not just drink decaf? It's so weird.
J:But anyway, back to the teeth. Let's go back to the teeth. What's interesting is, I'm not sure still how true this is, but there are some anatomical features that are typical of people living in the Asian continent.
B:That some paleontologists claim can be seen even as far back as Homo erectus in Asia. So think about what the implications of that would be.
J:Even with previous species of hominins, the interbreeding was happening enough that there are traits that carried all the way forward, like there are regional traits that carried forward even across species, which seems weird to me.
C:I'm not sure how solid that is at this point. But it also shows you how inexact a science taxonomy has historically been because originally taxonomy was all based on morphologies, based on how things looked.
S:And then we were able to do genetic testing and we were able to say, OK, this is a distinct species because it's genetically this far apart. Modern extant species, we often will say it's a different species if it can't produce viable offspring. But there's literally no way for us to know. If a homo erectus could have bred with a different homo species. So they're all the same genus, but how arbitrary is that distinction between genus and species based on a few teeth and a toe? Because it's a continuum. There's no objective place to draw a line on a
C:I mean, it's, you know, we can say with some assurance that like Homo neanderthalus or whatever was a distinct species who or a subspecies, however you want to do it, that has died off and you know, some of the DNA and it's the same with Denisovan and things like that. But when we look at these individual characters, I mean, there's a great quote here from a researcher who didn't work on this. Who said, it's a very interesting suggestion, but without genetic evidence, I think it's premature to declare that this one fossil provides compelling morphological evidence of denissum and ademus mixture in Asian derived populations. And so the question here is like, we need more fossils. When you have more fossils, you know, if it just didn't end up like if it's not just Jay, if that was just a fossil of Jay, who happened to have this one tooth, it's not indicative of
S:The Skeptic's Guide
C:Thank you for joining us today. Good genetic evidence. We still have the fact that Asians in that area have 40%. But that could have been an early mutation in Homo sapiens that then stayed within that region.
S:Okay. Are there any other explanations? Yeah, bottleneck. Do these findings allow me to feel less guilty about not flossing? No. Does that enter into it at all? Not at all. Not at all. Unfortunately. Just do it, George. I mean... It's important. Do we need to have the freaking talk?
J:George, flossing is like... Don't get Jay going.
C:Do you ever floss? Sure. I can't not floss. I have floss in my handbag all the time because I hate that feeling of like, but you know how you have like, everybody has like that one tooth?
B:Yeah. Right here. Yeah. I have all my wisdom teeth. Who has their wisdom teeth? Two of mine. I still have two.
C:Very wise. You got yours taken out? Mm-hmm. You got yours taken out? Oh, God. They're all four.
B:Still in?
C:Still in.
US#04:Yeah, unless you fall.
J:There's a hypothesis, I don't know how accepted it is, that modern humans, because we eat less tough food, our jaws are underdeveloped and our teeth are crowded for that reason.
S:Look back at a Romanian man, for example. Bigger jaws. Perfect teeth, they didn't have braces because they had just more room.
C:So our mouths are overcrowded. Was that based on the study? Somebody went to some tribe somewhere and everybody in that tribe had perfect teeth and he was trying to figure out why. He said because as you're eating food for the first time, if it's not baby food, if it's tough, rough food that you've got to crunch, that actually It builds up your jaw a little bit and gives more room for the teeth. Interesting.
S:So I don't think it's – yeah, that's at the point where we could say that's accepted consensus, but that's like a hypothesis at this point. But it's interesting that we're adversely affecting our teeth because of our baby food. And of course, mothers will say, I don't care. I'm going to feed my baby baby food because I don't want – because they're paranoid about a baby choking. So like I'll pay for braces down the line. I just don't want them to eat anything. Yeah, it's better if your baby didn't die.
B:Just let's make sure it lives long enough to need braces. Did you ever eat something like we were eating last night? We went to a... It was a Middle Eastern restaurant. It was Flee Flee. Yeah, Flee Flee. So I had some tabbouleh and it's got a lot of parsley. It is basically parsley with some other stuff in it. Two hours later, I'm home.
S:I'm at home at the hotel and I'm brushing my teeth and I look in and there was a big green and it occurred to me that nobody loves me. That is true. You know your friend.
B:You know you have a friend when they can tell you got something. Oh yeah. Absolutely. And Cara noticed it. I mean, Steve, it was like this. You know, I'm like, hey, how you doing? What's that tree sticking out of your mouth?
C:I agree. That's a duty of friends. That is your duty.
J:I was with family. It was you. Right. Your breath stinks.
S:You've got to blow your nose. Something's going on in your body.
J:All that's good. That's a duty. You're not a friend. I get it, but it is hard for people to be like, you've got a little boogie. No. I don't want to make your flies down. How do you do it? You have to be like, please, Just do it. Don't walk over to them and start, you know.
E:OK, I want to know from everybody here if I don't know you when your fly's down, but it's like, hello, should I tell you? This is what you do. You say, are you selling hot dogs?
J:I do not say that.
E:I actually remembered that joke and edited it out.
B:The fact that you said it just blows my mind. That's it. I am off the rails right now. Steve, what did you do? This is the slippery slope fallacy in action.
C:Remember what I did in England? There's a parallel between people not telling you that there's food in your teeth and, say, one of those singing competition shows. The people that are allowed to walk in that room, nobody loves those people at all.
S:That is world shaming.
J:Somebody knows them, knows they're terrible, and let them go on TV and shame themselves because they were too embarrassed to say, dude, really? We don't know that they didn't get the warning. No, we do. I auditioned for season two of American Idol and I went through multiple callbacks. I actually got accepted all the way to the very end before I got cut. And I remember having these moments of panic because I would see good people and terrible people and no one in between. And you don't know who you are? I don't know what group you're in. I am a trained jazz singer. I think I'm not terrible. I was in the good group that wasn't good enough because it was before I did any television. I was super camera shy. I didn't shine on camera, you know what I mean? So I could sing, but I was like, oh, okay, sorry, I don't want to interrupt. And they just were like, you're not ready to be on TV.
S:But I would see people come in who were just, oh, it was so sad. And you're right, they were just completely unaware. I mean, some of them I think We'll see you next time.
J:Thank you for joining us today.
C:I'm sitting across from Steve. I didn't see Jay. I don't believe that. It's too convenient. I just don't trust you anymore. I still love you. George. George, we're going to take a break from the news items.
News Item #3 - Cloud Cover and Global Warming (26:50)[edit]
C:George, we're going to take a break from the news items. Sure. To do some George questions.
B:I was curious to talk about this topic because it doesn't come up that often. These two funerals that I went to were kind of non-traditional.
C:One was just we all met by the graveside and we talked about the person and it was very lovely, his bandmates. He actually was the guitarist for Sister Sledge.
B:They did We Are Family.
J:That's his thing and that was his current band.
B:The band members came.
J:They told this great story about how Nile Rogers, who wrote the guitar riff, For this Dead Sister's Sledge song was at a gig once and he didn't know how to play the riff that he wrote because he had written it 30 years previous. So this guitarist had to show it to him.
S:So he had to teach him his own guitar riff. It was a great story. It was really very Mark. Mark was a wonderful guitarist. The other one was my cousin-in-law's father passed away back in Thanksgiving and he was in hospice.
US#04:And as he knew his time was limited, he said, I don't want a funeral. I would like a memorial but I want you guys to wait at least six months before you do anything because I want you all to get together after the shock of my sort of passing has gone and I just want you to celebrate. My life and what I had, and we had this get together. It was seven months later, and it was really wonderful. We all got to see each other. It was both sides of the family. They set up these three tables. One table had all of his craft work. He was an electrical engineer. In his spare time, he would do these amazing crafts. He would build dollhouse furniture for his nieces. He would do these sconces for kitchens and all kinds of stuff. The second table was a video The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe Thank you for joining us today. But please, if you have any sort of respect of what I would want, just like do anything else, just don't do the church thing. I've been very vehement about that. But if you guys, I'm just curious as to how you guys have thought about what you would want or wouldn't want. Do you mean, so question, because I think this is two different things, do you mean like if I died tomorrow or do you mean if I died elderly the way that you're? Those are two very different. Like ideally, like if you have a nice long life, what would you like your sort of funeral arrangements to be or not to be? secular. I think that's number one. No mention of God. That's weird. Although I have a friend whose sister died recently. I think I mentioned this on the show. And do you guys know Ryan Bell? Some of you might actually know. He's a humanist chaplain at USC, and he's big in the skeptic, but also in the atheist community. And so my friend reached out to me and said, do you know anybody who can do a secular service, like a secular priest or something? Because he was, I think, Adventist or I can't remember before. He was a pastor before he is the year without God guy. So he actually officiated and they did this smart thing where even on the program, it said like, in honor of her parents Jewish faith, there will be the whatever, I don't know what you do at a Jewish funeral, but the reading of this and the blah, blah, and in honor of her lack of faith, the remainder of the service will be secular in nature.
C:So they kind of did a cool hybrid thing. It was a hybrid. Now that you stole the tooth, you're not stealing. I don't even know what it's from. I'm just saying it's from Thanksgiving. Because they're always from these really nerdy things, and I'm just like, you've explained most of it to me. It's from Caddyshack. I don't care. It's a cross. Caddyshack, really. It's a cross between California Sensimilia and Kentucky Bluegrass. It's a hybrid. It's a hybrid. That's what I deal with the whole show. So much gets edited out here. We didn't quote movies. What were we talking about? I know. city of heroes My thinking George has always been I don't care because I'm dead Mm-hmm, honestly Honestly, honestly, that's your thinking.
J:Yeah, my thinking is you don't want some kind of it's about whatever Whatever the people who I leave behind want whatever is good for them because seriously, I'm dead.
C:Yeah The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella,
J:This week on
S:I understand the legacy thing. I don't think my funeral has a significant impact on my legacy.
J:I think my life will be my legacy, not my funeral. So I'm not worried about what role the funeral is playing in my legacy. And the funeral is just about the people who I leave behind dealing with the fact that I'm dead.
S:So whatever works for them, logistically dealing with all that stuff, they don't have to deal with it, great.
J:That's fine. But what if your funeral is like a giant larp? Like, what if you just do something crazy at your funeral? Like, you expect everybody to dress up like a wizard or something like that.
C:If they want to do that, they want to do that. I want Steve to have, like, the full-on Viking thing. Oh, float down. We have all these, like, candles floating in here. You fire arrows at the body out. You set it on fire.
S:So part of the service, right, or whether it be a wake or a memorial or an actual funeral, is the tradition around disposal. So, that's an interesting question. Does everybody know what they want to do with their body when they die? Yep, I do. You want to be a treat? Jay wants to be frozen. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't mind being frozen. Doing the frozen thing. I mean, my wife and I, we're 100% going to do it and now we're on the fence because we have kids and it's a lot of money.
C:And then I'm like, is it worth it? Because the chance of it working is very, very, very small.
S:Do you even want to be alive?
J:Yeah. Listen to last week's This American Life. I don't know if you heard it. I haven't heard it. Oh, did you want to cry? It's all about cryo. It's an older story they updated, but it's... It's still not...
E:It's, yeah.
C:Someone has to make a movie of this first guy because it's such a comedy of errors. It is such a comedy of errors. It's like multiple people were in like what was meant to be one tube for one person. They were putting like three, four, five people. Stacking them up? Yeah, they didn't have the facilities to do it. So this guy was like, OK, well, we'll fit. And he wasn't telling anybody.
J:It's such a comedy. All right. But that doesn't that doesn't necessarily reflect on the current state. I don't know. If they put you in the ground, what are the odds of you coming back?
US#04:No inferring brings you back. No, but you could be indistinguishable to other people. But you wake up all of a sudden, and you've woken up, and it's like, we've reconstructed you from your whatever. From what, your Facebook? Your Facebook, yeah. Yeah, with Facebook, with a lot of people, it'd basically be revolving around food. And babies.
E:And babies, yeah.
US#04:All right, I'm going to answer your question.
J:Anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah. So first, I thought with an extensive detail how I would, like, Everyone else in my life today. Not so much.
US#04:No, but I... Usually late at night alone. Plotting.
J:This one involves flame. This one involves a car. This one involves a sword. I love that voice.
US#04:So I think I'm the one out of all of us up here who's the most preoccupied with my mortality. I don't know. I think I might be, but I think you're the most afraid of death. Yeah. I just don't want to stop existing because that's what the fuck.
J:But I think about death like all day every day too. Yeah. So, but I've thought about... I have high mortality, say, Liam. That's why I think I jumped on Steve a little bit because I've thought about like what I want to do. Now, this is going to sound a little weird, but because my wife is sitting in the audience, I can't say one of the things I thought of because it's a surprise for her.
US#01:We roll the cake out, and there's a big spring in the bottom of the cake. But Courtney's sister knows it, but Courtney does not.
J:Wow. She's glorified. Funeral surprise that usually go together, you know?
C:That reminds me, real quick, Jay, real quick. Those sort of coffin things, you know, ahh. Does anyone know a ventriloquist?
J:Our friend Larry seriously wants this to happen at his funeral.
C:It won't happen.
J:And say why, though. Wait, does it, why? It's Larry. I mean, it's Larry. He wants to be rigged in his open coffin to when everyone's there to sit up and wave.
US#05:That is sadly only half the story.
J:So Larry, our friend Larry is late to everything. He wants to be late to his own funeral. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, I'm probably the one that would make it happen.
B:What do you have? I think it's great. How would you even begin?
J:You could do that.
B:You go to the funeral parlor and you're like, how do you get a corpse to sit up? It's not going to happen. If anyone else, they're going to know. It'll happen. You could do it. How? Hologram. It might not be legal.
J:No, it's legal.
B:All right.
J:Yeah, that's legal. Thanks for watching! The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
B:Thanks for joining us.
US#04:industrial purposes, whatever you want, or whatever they want.
C:You don't have any control over that. And then they'll keep all your parts together, but usually you're completely mangled and stuff, and they keep all your parts together, and then they'll cremate you, and they'll send back the cremate. I just changed my mind.
US#04:I do not want to know. I'm not going to China and India as a corpse.
C:Why? You're helping people. Send me to Canada. You can't choose. You guys will treat me nice. The thing is, you can't choose, but the cool thing is, You just said I could do whatever I want with the corpse. You can't, if you donate your body to a tissue bank, you can't choose what it's used for. But they will, the good tissue banks, the regulated ones, will send you back the cremains and they will give you a certificate. Did you say cremains? That's awesome. And they'll send you a certificate to your family that says vaguely, usually it won't say the actual institution, but it'll say vaguely what you were used for. Like so-and-so's donation helped us improve Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for joining us.
J:Definitely not legal.
C:But Jay, what do you want for your get together that happens after you're gone? Do you want to get together?
S:Do you want a party?
C:Do you want a procession?
US#04:When my father died two years ago, we had such an intense three months of just crippling remorse. I don't want to tell people, don't cry, you don't have to cry. It doesn't matter how old you are, people love you and they lose you.
C:I like the guy that said, wait six months, get over the bad thing, and then just kind of celebrate who I was.
US#04:I love that, that's cool.
C:I was at your father's memorial, I guess it was the viewing, and I didn't know your dad very well, but after that viewing, I got a real sense of who he was, which I really appreciated between the pictures and the stories that were being told. That to me was really special. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by
J:The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Cara Santa Maria,
S:She was very very ill for a long time and then like super ill and we all knew it was done but we all got to see her and we all got to tell her like you are awesome we love you and she got to hear it and she almost believed it that's the kind of person she was and I thought wow how cool is that to not then have to and then her mom did not have a funeral yeah because she was like everybody came The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Cara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, Cara Santa Maria,
US#04:That was the second hardest thing I ever had to go through, you know, to say goodbye. Mike Licell was our number one listener, fan. We don't like to use the word fan because it's... Yeah, he called himself that. But you're friends. But yeah, so then he came to the very first conference that we did, the Perry D'Angelo Memorial.
C:And then it was weird because we instantly were just like, oh, he's this guy is it was like with you, George. We met and we were like, well, like, awesome. We're going to stay in touch. And then it turned into like a deep friendship. Better than George, even better. So, Mike, you're disinvited to the funeral, Bob.
E:Mike's heart biology was backwards and they had to redo his heart when he was a baby.
J:It was like a miracle surgery that they actually kind of invented procedures with him. You know, like he was like, we've got to try to keep this kid alive. So I went up to see him and my wife and I went up to see him in the hospital and it was tough. It was so like, you don't know what I'm like trying to like.
C:All right, let me give him some normalcy.
J:You know, and I told him, what do you want me to bring you? And he wanted soda that he couldn't get in Canada. Which was like, you know, he just was a really big fan of a lot of like food items from the United States. Is that is that a Canadian thing? I said something to him the hardest moment was like we're leaving and we all knew we weren't going to see each other again and I'm like sitting there like for the an hour before we were leaving I'm like I don't want that some people don't some people it's just like see you later like they don't want to say goodbye I wanted to be there when he passed away to be there for him.
C:There's often like an intense fear that people go through. And so having somebody with you to kind of just help you through that fear.
J:Can you imagine being alone during those moments? A lot of people die alone. Yeah. I mean, if he asked me and Courtney, I think we would have stayed. Yeah. You know, but it was just very it was it was I hate to say this because it just sounds like I'm being selfish, but it was really awkward.
C:Of course. Of course. It's probably awkward for him, too. I went up, I kissed him.
J:I hugged him.
C:And then his favorite movie was Ghostbusters. So the very last thing I said to him, It was, I'll see you on the other side. And he totally got it. You know, he totally understood in that moment, the way he looked at me. But I mean, it's like, what else can you say? Like, we didn't have time to review our friendship and there wasn't a lot of time. That was tough, but I felt awesome that we drove up there and saw him. It was so important to me and Courtney to give him that and to get what we got out of it.
J:One of the things that I'm trying to work towards in my PhD program is becoming a hospice psychotherapist. And so there's a cool body of literature, a lot of it's in the existential area around mortalities, aliens, understanding your own death, being really aware of it. And then when people are getting close, the types of therapies that are available. And one of the
B:One of the
J:Thank you for joining us today.
C:And who they are. So one of the more, I think, modern existential views is that death is a stage of growth. It's a process and it's life. It's not the end. It's a stage where you can actually really learn things about yourself and grow. And so embracing it in that way and not... Dying is. Dying is. Yeah, death at the very end is. Yeah, but the death and dying process can be something where a lot of meaning can come from it. And so there's a lot of, I think, newer Thanks for joining us. Yeah, he really didn't want to... Well, two days before my dad passed away, after all this time has gone by and collecting data, like talking to my mom and us talking to each other, we realized that my dad knew he was going to die. So he did not want to die in a hospital. I think he felt that his heart gave out, right? He was my mom was like giving tons of information that she never really shared before she's like, you know, he absolutely had symptoms He was acting strange the last couple of weeks because he you know I think my dad Knew it and he just wanted to see his family and we had a family party that happened It was very impromptu that happened
E:The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Cara Santa Maria, Cara Santa Maria,
J:So, one thing that my wife did for me that was amazing for me was that a couple years before my dad died, and you know, my 50th birthday was two years away, she, you know, or whatever, like a year and a half away, she went to my parents' house, I didn't even know this happened, and she sat down and video recorded a discussion with my dad about me. So she's talking to him and, you know, what's your favorite memory of Jay? You know, like he didn't even know. He didn't even know what was going on. And she gave it to me for my 50th birthday. That was just like, that's great. And that's that. That crippled me, though. That was like so awesome. You're going to have that for your whole life. You can always look at that when you miss it. That's what I think people want. Yeah, absolutely. Especially feelers, like people who are very emotionally based. They want, and this is what I want to give anyone I can, is just let them know what I thought about them, let them know in no uncertain terms, good, bad, or indifferent. So we have two global warming related news items.
News Item #4 - Planting Trees to Fight Global Warming (49:37)[edit]
- Global warming: Planting a trillion trees could be the "most effective solution" to climate change, study says - CBS News [4]
J:So we have two global warming related news items. Speaking of death. So several people have emailed us recently about a new paper that's going on. It's actually pre-published. It's not peer reviewed or published. And the bottom line claim of this paper is that changes in cloud cover can explain all of the temperature changes in the last 50 plus years. What? Therefore, there's no room left over for CO2. Therefore, there's no man-made global warming. See, that carrot's all set. Done. Because of the clouds? Because of the clouds. Because we could dump as much CO2 as we wanted to. Yeah, I'm sure it doesn't matter. Because it has no effect on the temperature.
S:So actually... So I'm not surprised it's not peer reviewed. It's brought to you by Exxon did this report. Whatever, they have some of the best climate scientists. The lead author is Jay Kaupinen, who is Finnish. I tried to find more information on him, but apparently that's a very common name. I think he's more done than finished. He's a physicist, not an atmospheric scientist. But I found another paper from 2014, so five years ago, making the exact same claim by a different scientist, MacLean, who's also a physicist and not a climate scientist. And the argument is essentially this. So first, does everyone here know what the climate sensitivity is? You know what that concept is? Have you heard that before, climate sensitivity?
C:No.
S:Climate sensitivity is, you know, when people who are trying to be scientific, you know, climate science deniers, that's what they talk about is climate sensitivity. Specifically, it means what would be the increase in temperature
US#04:With a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels, right? That's the climate sensitivity.
S:So that's the big question. So like, you can't question that we're putting CO2 into the atmosphere, right? And you can't really even question that there is a hothouse effect from CO2. Yeah, but they do question that. What they question is, how much does that affect? Thank you for joining us. You know, the sweet spot is between 2 and 4 degrees C for doubling. So it's probably like 99%, probably somewhere between 2 and 4. But they'll say, oh yeah, but it could be 1. It could be less than 1. It could be really low. If you look at other papers, it shows that the range is even much wider. But yeah, they're looking at the long tail of outliers. at one way yeah if you go three standard deviations away from the evidence that we have so that's irrelevant but what this related argument is and and this you know i've read articles also that say that Cloud cover is the last refuge of the climate-denying scientists, because this is where there's the most uncertainty in our climate models, because the effect of climate change on clouds and the effect of clouds on the climate is complicated. And where there's complexity and uncertainty, that's where the deniers live. It's all about doubt and confusion, and so you live in where we have the most uncertainty. So, but here's the quickie version of what we do know, and that is that the clouds do have a huge impact on the temperature. On the weather or on the climate? On temperature, right, on climate, yeah. Overall? Yeah, yeah, because so low-lying clouds are dense and they reflect a lot of light back to the sky, the space. Cumulus clouds. Whatever the low ones are. Cumulus. Yeah, so they are low to the ground and dense is the key. Well how low? Because then it turns into fog. Thanks for joining us today. But if the clouds get higher, they get cooler, and the cooler they are, the more heat they absorb and trap, and so then they have more of a heating effect. So clouds both increase and decrease temperature by these two different mechanisms, and the balance all depends on the density and altitude of the clouds. The higher and thinner the clouds, the more light gets through, the less heat gets out. The denser and lower they are, the less light gets through, and the more heat that gets out. Does that make sense? Yeah, are there like biomes around the globe where clouds are really consistent? Yeah, like the rainforest.
C:Yeah, so that the cloud cover is not as dynamic as it is.
S:Well, it's always, there's always a certain amount of... Well, also, wait, but also there could be multiple cloud layers. You could have countless clouds close to the Earth. No, for sure. I'm just wondering if there are places where like that would be a good place to test And some of the problems, and even Mike McLean admitted in his paper, well, we only got data going back to 1980, so this is really the hypothesis. So we need more data going forward on cloud cover. That's partly why even the models are just like, we don't have enough
C:We have a hundred years of really good information about cloud cover and density. And if we don't have pre-industrial numbers, then what is the really, like we're already in the model.
S:Basically, what's been happening over the last 50 years and how does that correlate with temperature, right?
C:So, it is true that clouds have been, are becoming, basically there's a decrease in low cloud cover recently, over the last 50 years. So, and that would correlate with
S:Thanks for watching! And how are they affected by temperature?
C:What is the feedback of clouds on the climate?
S:As it gets warmer, are clouds going to mitigate the warming or enhance the warming? We don't know that either. They will do both, but the question is, what's the net effect? They will do both. The question is, what's the net effect? That sounds impossible to determine. It's not impossible. It's just really difficult. But there's the climate-denying scientist, Lindzen. If you ever read a scientist saying that climate change is not real, it's that guy, right?
J:Spencer and Lindzen.
S:Oh, because they are climatologists? George, these are two people I want a letter to go to. So Lindzen's whole point is, The changes in cloud cover are a negative feedback loop that will completely mitigate global warming, so don't worry about it. That's basically his position. God's going to work it out. It's all just whatever. The feedback is going to keep it homeostatic. That's lucky. We can just pump as much CO2 as we want. The clouds will take care of it. Forget about it. What did they say about warming that's clearly happened in the past 10 years? Every year is the hottest year ever. That doesn't exactly fit that. But the range of possibilities are from a little negative to positive. You know, it could be nothing on average, but it's actually the more recent data is trending towards, there's probably a positive feedback loop from the change of clouds from global warming, which was bad, right? So that's what you were saying. The cloud cover, like low-lying clouds get less as the planet warms.
C:That would be a positive feedback loop on global warming.
S:That's a bad thing. So this is what's at. This is like the most recent data on what is actually happening to the clouds over the last 50 years.
C:As the planet warms, two things are happening.
B:The clouds are getting higher and thinner. That's bad, right? And they're moving towards the poles.
S:That's also bad, because the poles already are white, and so there's no increase in libido from going from white snow to albedo. Libido, albedo. Yeah, you did. Because I'm saying though, because right there is a completely true statement, there is no change in libido. There is something about... About what's happening with the clouds and balding. Yes. Wait, wait, watch. The clouds move back and it gets thinner and there's a change in libido. Right, George? There's no change in libido. Steve, you're right. The libido's not the problem. I think you're right, though, because at some point it gets so high you just don't want to have sex. It's too high. So, as I was saying, there's no change from snow to clouds with albedo, right? So wait, how does, so, once again, just as a refresher, they get higher, the clouds get higher and thinner, and how does that affect the... So the higher they are, the less, the more they trap the heat, and the thinner they are, the less they bounce back.
J:Which is terrible if they're hovering over the poles, because that's already... No, no, no, but the problem is when they go to the poles, So you're taking clouds that are reflecting light. It's white on white. No impact. It has an impact when they're below the poles. Gotcha.
B:But it's not an increase in the albedo.
US#04:So it's a massive decrease in albedo.
B:It's trapping heat, which is a problem. Because the poles are warming faster, like we're seeing greater rates of glacial. Once the snow melts, then that effect will go away. Once the snow melts, we won't be here anymore. Yeah, exactly.
C:We'll be hanging with Kevin.
S:Thank you for joining us.
C:The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, and Evan Bernstein.
S:Like the most complex thing that humans are trying to unravel right now. It's very, and I think of the sciences that are being denied, it's probably the most complicated one.
J:It took me a long time to figure out what's the current consensus on the effect of clouds on global warming and vice versa and that was like, that took me a long time. And most people aren't going to spend that time.
S:And so you can read a paper that sounds like, oh, look, it's tracking really nicely.
J:That makes sense.
C:And this was written by scientists and published in a preprint. Anybody who doesn't have the science literacy would be screwed. No, it takes a pretty high level. And in fact, most of the people who were emailing me were like, there's some red flags here, like the guy's mostly citing himself.
J:There are six references and four of them are in itself. Also, only six references is a red flag.
S:That's like watching a porno of yourself. You just don't do that. Yeah, that'd be weird. Each reference says, The first six words were, in this paper, we will prove.
C:Right there.
S:Yeah, that's bad. No, no, no, no, no. Scientists, they don't use, they don't say, we're gonna prove this, we prove, they didn't prove shit. Letter to the editor, you ain't proved shit.
C:So even when you have really, really compelling evidence,
S:They say, you know, the data is consistent with this interpretation, or suggests, or blah blah blah. They're not even being humble with their research. They don't say, look! We will provide compelling evidence to support the theory. When you start throwing around the word proof right there, it's like, why even read past it? Yeah, but Steve, again, this is one of those things, like, I didn't know that until you just said it.
US#04:Yeah. Which means that probably a lot of people... That's a scientific literacy thing.
S:Scientists know that, right? A scientist would read this and go, this guy's a jerk. Who here is a patron and knew that using the word prove in this paper was bullshit? Yeah, it's a red flag. Good for you! Look at that one flag, because we can't hear that on the podcast. How come I didn't know that? You see, you're not educating us enough. You're right. No, I think you're not listening enough because they did. Listen to the podcast. Yeah, read our book. There are people who speak in absolutes.
J:So all this paper proved that they're an asshole.
S:Well listen, this is among the last holdouts of the climate.
J:We hope they'll come up with something else. Oh yeah, but that's my thought too. Sure, though, you know, there is a little bit of movement, you know, in terms of, even some of the politicians who are against it are starting to say, I guess we should start to look for some actual, you know, solutions we can live with.
C:They keep conceding. They keep conceding points. It's true.
S:More and more concessions, more and more concessions.
C:It's happening, but it's not because of us.
S:Well, it's because of us, but what are you going to do?
J:Well, what are you going to do? But you can't prove that.
S:That's what it'll be.
C:It's too late. Right. Six weeks ago. Remember when they said it was too late?
S:Wait a minute, do you think it's a coincidence that George is saying the six weeks thing and then he tells all of us how we want to die? We're all planning our funerals here on stage.
George Questions the Rogues (1:04:10)[edit]
What do you want your funeral to be like? None
S:We're all planning our funerals here on stage. What do you know, George?
E:What the f*** is going on?
S:All right, but it's not all bad news, because Jay's news item is about how we're going to prevent global warming. Right, sort of. Yeah, this is intense. All right, so you guys probably read the headline about how if we plant an incredible amount of trees, that we could capture a lot of carbon.
US#04:Yeah, there's a lot of detail here, so I got to definitely refer to my notes.
S:So the quick thing about it is that we need to plant the right kind of trees
US#04:And essentially the exact right kind of places to have this be really effective because the soil is different and the trees, you know, you can't just plant any kind of tree anywhere.
J:So there's a lot of calculating on that.
S:But this study that they did is really cool. So the quick headline is that we could capture a significant amount of carbon dioxide over the next 40 years if we do this.
J:So Tom Crowther, who is the author of this recent study, he's a professor of global ecosystems ecology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He and his team studied about 80,000 satellite image measurements. I don't think it was 80,000 images, but they had all of these measurements that were taken from satellites about tree cover, and then they merged that tree cover data with Really, really detailed databases that contain soil and climate information about each hectare, right? A hectare is 2,471 acres or 10,000 square meters. That's huge. You understand meters? Yeah. Okay. So this effort that they did resulted in a global map showing just how many trees that the Earth could actually support, which is really, really cool. And it also shows where new forests could be cultivated in areas that have little tree growth now, little to no tree growth. This, of course, excludes places that already contain forests, urban development areas, farmland, and then places like deserts where it would be a Herculean effort to make anything grow there. So they said that the result was 0.9 billion hectares that could be forested. So the calculation, 0.9 billion hectares, which is 10,000 square meters, so 10,000 times 0.9 billion, if you're interested in the number, That's the number of area on the surface of the Earth where we could have fully grown new forests. And if we do this, they would capture two hundred and five gigatons of carbon dioxide to give you. Yeah. Now these are numbers and like these hectares and all this like we can't just easily understand the size and everything. So seeing a map of the United States, you know, we don't have one. And just because it's a podcast, the audience can't see it. But you can easily find this map online. And it shows you areas that are in green that could be forested, and areas in blue that are currently forested, and areas in gray that cannot be forested. And let me tell you, it's a huge amount of land. It's just an enormous amount of land that we could be planting these forests. And so when you say could be, can you just one more time review what that means? Like, we're not displacing anybody, the ground can support it, we don't have to terraform or do anything, or we do? No, there are some problems with it. The big problem is water. Yeah, so water... So this is not places where there's sufficient water? They don't know yet, they haven't gone there yet, but yeah, they're just saying, like, this is where we could put trees. Thanks for watching! The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, We have to be considerate to the fact of growth for more farming, because we need more farmland as the population grows.
C:That there's current populations that use land for other things, that it is a new land.
J:But, you know, we're not also calculating in like for sudden, for some reason like massive spikes in like we need more land to live on, like which would turn into be urbanized land. But it's just, this is where things are right now. Let me give you some more information because this is interesting.
C:The cost is estimated to be $300 billion USD. That's it. It's not that expensive.
J:You could even double that and it's still within reach. Another benefit... Let's continue because the information here is really cool. It's not just the headline. I say, I read the headline. I'm like, cool. And then, you know, you read the details and you're like, wait a second, this is reachable. Another benefit with force is that it would restore biodiversity that we've lost. We've lost a ton of biodiversity. So this would save more species from going extinct, which is great. It provides food. It would provide medicine. It will provide clean water and it gives evil spirits a place to hide. Thank you for joining us today.
S:But this is basically saying, like, we need to go into the Amazon and replant all of the places where they're gold mining and clearing, clear cutting.
J:Well, yeah, obviously, but that's a geopolitical conflict. So one way I look at this is that this is the upper limit of what we could achieve with complete reforestation. That's potential. We're never going to hit it. We're not going to hit it 100% on potential. But let's put it in perspective. So it was like 200 and something gigatons. You know how much we emit a year? It's about 36 gigatons, right?
C:So that's another interesting fact. Six, seven years of CO2 emissions. Right. But that's right. There's a couple of things.
B:Yeah.
J:To give you to give you an example.
B:So that figure, 200 and whatever, is two thirds of everything that has been released from today all the way back to the beginning of the year.
C:It's more important to know about going forward. That's true. But Steve and I were talking... But those are mitigation efforts at that point. We can't undo the path.
B:It just gives us time.
S:Yeah, exactly. They just slow things down a little bit so that when we do everything else, you know, whatever, if we're racing against the clock, we need to do everything. This is one of the things we need to do. Exactly. And the scary thing is that both reforesting and all of the mitigation efforts that we're cutting... Yeah. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
J:So I've seen a spectrum from 40 years to 100 years for the forest to fully mature.
C:They would instantly start pulling, as the trees grow, they start pulling, pulling, pulling. And then when they get full grown, then the pulling is done.
S:Then they won't do anything else. Then they just store it.
C:Which is great, because as we know, when we cut down trees and use trees as products and everything, we're re-entering that carbon into the system. So it's self-limiting. The Skeptic's Guide
J:It's a simultaneous, interesting issue, like I remember we covered this on SoCal Connected, where there's a negative correlation between tree cover and poverty in almost every industrialized area or even, yeah, like the richer the neighborhood, the more it's planted, which is unfortunate. Cara, did you ever read this stat, like in cities like London, who have a lot more tree cover, like the average temperature of that city? It's way down. It's lower than you would expect.
C:Now, what I don't understand is does the tree help mitigate... A canopy? He exchange like it literally blocks the sun from from hitting the concrete that's really what it is the concrete has a really high albedo and the trees actually shade all the places that are sinks so like the and like sports sports fields and things like that and so what you end up seeing is that the poorest people are living in the hottest least biodiverse areas with less access to food especially places like Los Angeles where trees equal food yeah The Skeptic's Guide
J:Nothing like this has ever been done.
C:We've never had a global, like, we have to globalize. This was the whole thing about recycling was like, act locally, think globally. Like, nobody's thinking, you know, who's really thinking globally? Like, we need our governments to work together. I'll tell you what millennials think globally. They do. They have to. How about if we took that, what if we use technology instead? Take that piece of that $300 billion and invest it in technology that could actually pull the carbon out of the atmosphere.
B:The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.
J:And this can be amortized, like in LA we actually have these cool programs from the city where they give trees to people. Like if you want a tree in your yard you can go get one for free from the city and they'll like help you with it. So there's like, if we saw more municipalities kind of doing their part and taking on a little bit of that burden, because ultimately it helps them.
B:Like it's going to make things better for the municipality. How does California deal with the water issue then? Our water issue, it's tough, right? Because I think the thing is you have to grow native plants. That's the biggest thing.
C:We do have trees, we have elms, or sorry, not elms, live oaks grow natively in my neighborhood.
S:So we know that they have the potentiality to be low water intensive trees.
J:But the problem is, if you look around LA, most of the trees you see are palms.
C:Or YUCA, which don't naturally grow in LA. They brought them all from Mexico. And it's like, I think a lot of that is just educating people about if you're going to be doing your own landscaping, only use native plants. That reminds me of the native Americans who lived in California before the white man took their land. They had acorn culture. They lived off the oak trees. We had tons of live oaks.
E:You could grow live oaks like bananas.
C:We think of palm trees when we think of LA, but that's all fake. One of the most effective types of diplomacy across the globe is science diplomacy. We've seen this time and time again that scientists across borders will work together long before you see government leaders. We've seen it between North and South Korea. We've seen really interesting diplomacy happen. Because they don't give a shit. Scientists want to just solve these problems. So this news item was the one, it was a milestone news item for me. It was the marker in my head.
S:It helped me open a part of my brain where I'm like, okay, we are, our politicians are still like quibbling over, like they're- Bringing snowballs into the center. Yeah, they're not doing anything. Like we need to, like this study comes out that yes, like this study comes out and we should be like, okay, so when can we start?
C:Like seriously, like, okay, this is a no brainer. Planting trees is not going to do anything bad as long as we're planting local stuff. Let's just start doing it. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, and Evan Bernstein.
J:All right, Evan, so a lot of people recommended this to us as the dumbest thing of the week.
Dumbest Thing of the Week: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/florida-principal-lose-job-holocaust-denial_n_5d265e06e4b0583e482b8ac5 (1:16:07)[edit]
- [url_from_show_notes None] [5]
J:All right, Evan, so a lot of people recommended this to us as the dumbest thing of the week.
J:Yep, and I totally agree with them. We've heard about the principal in Florida who made some interesting comments, or it was reported recently that he had been making some very interesting comments, to the people of Boca Raton. So it's the principal of Spanish River High School, his name, William Latson. He, Florida man. Yes, Florida man. He told a parent that as a public school official, he needs to remain politically neutral when it comes to teaching Holocaust education. Yes, that is what he said.
S:In fact, he said as part of a long email exchange he had with one particular parent, here is his exact word.
E:I can't say the Holocaust is factual or a historical event because I'm not in a position to do so as a school district employee. What? Yeah, that's in writing. So wait, what do school district employees do? I mean, it's a ridiculous statement in so many ways. I'm not empowered to teach. And implicit in that is that the Holocaust is not a historical fact. Exactly. It's a political opinion. And it got worse, because he continued, he doubled down essentially. Not everyone believes the Holocaust happened, and you have your thoughts, but we're a public school, not all of our parents have the same beliefs, so they will react differently. You know, so insert something like biology or something instead of holocaust or math or anything, you know. I mean, this is the attitude that this fell off. That guy should lose his job so fast he gets whiplash. This is unconstitutional. This is unconstitutional?
C:You know what, that's a good question, Cara.
E:I don't know if it violates any federal level of... Is it privileging of religion?
S:I don't know. He's been reassigned. There's a hearing coming up in two weeks in which they're going to discuss his future.
E:He's probably going to be gone. And was this because parents like spoke up? Yep. This is quite the Jewish population in Boca Raton. Yeah, Boca Raton in Florida. There's a couple Jewish people down there who may still have some, you know, relatives. What did that guy say? Murray, let's get him. He also says, is the principal saying, I work to expose students to certain things but not all parents want their students exposed so they will not be and I can't force that issue. So he's blaming the parents now. Yeah, that's right.
C:Are there any call of us denying parents in the school?
E:Is he responding to something or is he just a call of us denying parents? No, these are his personal thoughts. These are his thoughts that he's interjecting into the school.
C:I bet no parents have said anything to him.
E:But even if one has and he's being afraid of this one person, it doesn't matter. Even if he's pandering to one person, the needs of that one person do not... What the trigger for that was? I mean, that's kind of out there, you know? Why does he think that it's a political question?
US#04:Steve, I think that's all just BS. He's black male, so I don't know.
E:I won't make any assumptions. Yeah. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Is it just woeful ignorance? Is it that level of woeful ignorance? Maybe?
S:Is it misguided political correctness? Yeah, misguided political correctness. It's a combination.
E:This isn't one of those things that slip through the cracks like not knowing the Earth is round. Remember that comedian on The View?
J:Like this is, you have to like,
C:You have to be steeped in the conspiratorial culture to be a denialist. You'd think fully involved to get there. You'd think so. Here's a few stats so you can chew on.
S:This is from the United Kingdom. More than 2.6 million British people think the Holocaust is a myth.
E:8% of the British people say that the claims and scale of the genocide has been greatly exaggerated. That was 2018, also from 2018, 31% of Americans, 41% of millennials believe that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and also that overall 66% of millennials today do not, who have opinions about the Holocaust that are not in line with the facts.
J:Not 66%.
C:Didn't you say, what was this one you said about Auschwitz? Yo, that's it.
J:Yeah, that's it. 66% of millennials cannot say what Auschwitz was.
E:They didn't know what Auschwitz was. Did not know what Auschwitz was. Okay, so that's ignorance versus denial. Yeah, that's a different show. I've not heard that word. The stat from Britain, though, sounds like denial. That's denial. Is there anyone from Britain here? You, sir? Can you explain to us what's going on here? You're a foreigner. Yes, foreigner. Stand up in the back. Explain yourself. There's obviously a lot of groups that study the trends of the study of World War II, and specifically the Holocaust, Auschwitz, and other things. The trend markers are going in terrible directions. Essentially, as population gets older and dies off, and newer people are coming in, they are Not being informed correctly, I think that's about as nicely as... There's political will behind this, without a doubt.
US#04:Thanks for closing with us. Dumbest thing of the week, yes.
J:Makes me angry. Angry right now. Remember six weeks ago, before the white nationalists? So I was starting to read... They made the clouds, make it really hot.
US#04:And the libido. That's great. Good times. Good times.
J:Bob said something too, but nobody...
E:Bob, you're going to do Science or Fiction this week. Yes, I dare you. It's time for Science or Fiction.
Science or Fiction (1:21:52)[edit]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | Item #3 |
| Science | Item #1 |
| Science | Item #2 |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|
E:It's time for Science or Fiction. So this is going to be a little different. You're doing Science or Fiction? Yeah.
J:He threw that on me like yesterday.
E:By the way, Steve, deal with it.
C:No, it was earlier in the week.
E:I remembered it yesterday. So this one's a little bit different. I'm doing a themed science of fiction, and it's about three speakers for the conference. Okay. Okay.
US#04:All right.
E:So number one, one of the speakers, Randy Hutter Epstein, ran against Chris Christie for president. Two, Brandt McDuff has a friend's placenta in his freezer and plans to make a haggis with it. Science or fiction?
U:Three.
B:Debbie Goddard has been arrested twice for protesting. Okay. Two are true, or science, and one is completely made up. Poll the audience. We'll do a single clap, you know the deal, when I come like, boom, we do a clap, let's just try one together, here's a clap.
C:Okay, that's how you vote.
B:Chris Christie for president, ran against Chris Christie for president. Two has a friend's placenta in his freezer.
J:has been arrested twice for protesting.
B:So the first two are pretty much tied, right? No, I think number one was the thing. OK, OK. All right. Randi Hutter Epstein, Bob. Yeah. She ran against Chris Christie for president. I do think that of the three, that one is the most likely to be the fake. But I want to read the other two. Brandt McDuff has a friend's placenta in his freezer. And this is so ridiculous that I believe it. You want to make haggis with it? But what? Haggis, it's all right.
US#04:I mean, why add that to an already completely effed up recipe? You know what would make haggis even better?
B:How can I make this worse? What can I add to this to make this even more disgusting? I know! My friend's placenta. Oh, that's good flavor there.
C:Yeah, that's great.
J:You can really taste the placenta. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Brant McDuff is so strange, that's fact. Randy did not run against Chris Christie. That's the fiction. Can I ask you a question?
Voiceover:Yeah. So, it's a rant against... No, you cannot... Go ahead. It's a rant against Chris Christie for president, not for president, for president of the United States. Right. Assume whatever the hell you want. I don't know. Well, that sucks, Bob. All right. When you say for President, you're implying President of the United States. Sometimes you make the wrong implication.
J:I'll let you, I'm not going to answer that, but I'll let you, based on my, you know, non-answer, you could change. I'm not saying what that's for, but you know. She ran for President of the Ferra Club. Thanks, Bob. This is when you complain. You have to complain now. Okay, I thought enough to ask the question.
B:Yes, I was hoping somebody would realize that that's an assumption.
S:Yes. So Jay, come on. If it's not of the United States, that makes no sense. The audience, it's all scuttled.
B:The audience didn't know it, I didn't know it. Well, you know, I'm assuming some background level of apologies here. These are our patrons. We can't do this shit to people. I mean, look at him, he's got tears in his eyes. I know she lives in New York and Christy lives in New Jersey, but I don't know, maybe she was in New Jersey for a time, I don't know. So, you know, sure, that's plausible once you ask the right question. And then the placenta one, it's weird, but people do that sort of thing. They do? They do placenta haggis?
S:I've never heard the placenta hag up in the hills. People eat placenta.
B:Yeah, but usually that's like a wooey like, I want to get long hair and glowing skin. Right, so the question is why would a skeptic do it? That's my question. Unless they're just like it's organ meat. It's all the same.
J:Put it in the haggis. Or it's a dairy or something. He didn't say human. Is it, was it the, you said that they're friends placenta- Oh they did say they're friends. He could be friends with a goat.
S:And their friend's goat's placenta. This recipe is getting weirder and weirder. I'm friends with a goat and I'm using his placenta.
C:No, it's complex, I'm telling you.
S:Thanks for watching! The first one about running for president, I don't understand it, Bob. Besides running for president of the United States, what else do people run for? Student body president?
US#04:So I interviewed Randy from my podcast.
S:We talked for an hour and Chris Christie's name never came up. So she's an MD, MPH, but she doesn't work at the, I mean, she has a position at a university, but she's not a professor.
E:So I don't think she would have been running for anything at a university again. And what would Chris, the only thing I can think of is if they went to high school together, which would be weird. Yeah. Yeah, like if they both ran for student body president against each other in high school, it would be hilarious. Or yeah, like a condo board or something. That would be so weird. You don't want that. I wouldn't want that. That sounds like a lot of what's going on. Everybody that ever got that job turns into an a-hole. Yeah, of course. Don't do it. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? It does.
C:I think it does, even in the condo. Move those garbage pails! Okay. So... Don't slaughter sheep in the backyard. It could be... You're not Cookie's LaSenta there, are you? It could be that she ran against him in some obscure thing when they were young, but that feels like a long shot to me. The other two seem more reasonable, so... I'm just going to go with my gut and say that Randy never ran against Chris Christie.
J:Whatever you want, I don't care.
C:I was thinking Debbie was arrested more than twice. I was leading with Steve as well, but I think now... But it would have to be like 20 times.
J:That's what I'm thinking, yeah. Or maybe she's never been arrested.
C:Well, arrested, maybe it's a weird thing. Maybe she's been detained or something, because I know she's hardcore.
J:So I'm going to go with Debbie.
C:I'm going to say that Debbie is the... Okay, so no sweep.
J:Pull the audience again. No sweep, crap.
S:Okay.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:29:21)[edit]
"To me science describes a world far more interesting than any psychic fantasy. It's a good world, not perfect, but it's ours, and we better learn to live with it the way it is."
– James Randi, (description of author)
S:Okay.
C:So number one, Randy against Chris Christie for president. Okay. Two, Brandt, placenta thing. They're so easily swayed by Steve. Don't be, I have a terrible record.
US#04:Okay, so let's start at the top here.
B:I don't even remember who voted for what, so I won't even care.
US#04:So Randi Hutter Epstein, she is talking Sunday, 10.50 AM, and her talk is Aroused, a History of Hormone, Healers, and Huxters. Sounds fascinating. She ran against Chris Christie for president of high school.
B:And she lost. She lost. This is 1979, when she authorized me releasing that day. It was rigged. Bob, what does that look like? What does that look like to you?
C:I don't know, a little violin?
B:I don't know. It looks like an asshole. Don't, don't, don't beat yourself up, Jay.
S:Don't beat yourself up. I gave him the chance.
B:Two, Brant McDuff, Sunday, 4.30. He's closing out the conference. A brief history of taxidermy. I heard he's awesome, so I'm definitely going to check that out. Especially considering that he literally has a friend's placenta in his freezer, and he wants to make haggis with it, and he said, he said, he said, I've been after one for a long time. It's the only human flesh that's legal to eat. Oh, yeah. That's funny. I love this guy. I would never do it, but I love this guy. Okay. Which means Debbie Goddard, who's speaking Saturday at 10 a.m., she's talking about the science of change, evidence-based methods for effective activism.
C:She has never been arrested.
B:Never been arrested. You know, I think she had a very boring life. I said, all right, give me something interesting. She's like, I have nothing. Use me as the lie. I'm like, OK, have you ever been arrested? No, I've never been arrested. But she has protested, but never been arrested. So she is a fiction. George. George never wins. George. And we're all excited because you didn't screw up our averages.
C:That's right, okay, that's right. We're all still in the same level.
B:Now George, we've been preparing for this because you've pretty much, you've never won Science of Things 1. No, he's won! So what we're willing to give you is a funeral of any mom you choose. But it has to be this week. Four days, the coupons are good for four days. I want at my funeral just like play my tunes and every silly like YouTube video with me. Yeah, fuck yeah. Duh. That's all I want. My celebration for my death will be the heat death of the universe. That's all. You just want everybody to go down with you. Six weeks from now. I want the whole world to mourn my loss.
C:I want everyone here to be pissed off because their favorite show has been preempted. Bob has died. See you next time.
US#04:To me, science describes a world far more interesting than any psychic fantasy. It's a good world, not perfect, but it's ours, so we better learn to live with it the way it is.
B:James Randi Well, that we are a little bit over time. So thank you all for joining us for our private show here at Nexus.
S:George, George, we're happy to have you.
B:Thank you, we love being here. Thank the rest of you for joining me up here today.
S:Thanks, Steve.
B:And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.
E:Skeptic's 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 at theskepticsguide.org.
S:And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com slash 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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- ↑ www.nature.com: The gravitational-wave detection of exoplanets orbiting white dwarf binaries using LISA
- ↑ www.pnas.org: None
- ↑ theness.com: Clouds and Climate Change - NeuroLogica Blog
- ↑ www.cbsnews.com: Global warming: Planting a trillion trees could be the "most effective solution" to climate change, study says - CBS News
- ↑ [url_from_show_notes None: None]
- ↑ No reference given
- ↑ No reference given
- ↑ No reference given