SGU Episode 1015
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| SGU Episode 1015 |
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| December 21st 2024 |
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Ancient artifact with inscriptions, highlighting early human communication and creativity. |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
America's leadership must be guided by learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain popular ascendancy, with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem. |
John Fitzgerald Kennedy |
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| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro[edit]
E: You're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Saturday, December 7th, 2024 and this is your host. Steven Novella was a little weak.
US#07: It's. Unclear. A little unclear.
S: Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Everybody. Cara Santa Maria.
C: Howdy.
S: J Novella. Hey, guys. Evan Bernstein, Hello, Washington, DC and George Robb Chestnuts Roasting. Hey. So yeah, we are in Washington, DC, our nation's capital. Actually lived here for five years. It's a very nice city. We came back to do A to record our live show here.
News Items[edit]
The Science of Tipping (01:11)[edit]
S: So we are going to get into some news items. We're going to do a little bit of AQ and a like halfway through the show. Have you guys all submitted your questions? So Kara. Oh.
C: Yes.
S: How do we get how do if you live off tips, how do you get people to tip more?
C: So I'm going to answer not that question today, but I thought I was going to be answering that question, but it turns out it's much more complicated than that. So a recent study that was published in the Journal of Business Research, I love these online publications because it says it was published in January 2025. I'm not sure how that.
S: They always, they do usually date the publication the month after it comes out so it's relevant longer.
C: It's so weird.
S: Dated the moment it hits the shelves.
C: Cheaters what? Yeah, cheaters. So these researchers who actually focus their research, their marketing professors and they study digital tipping, which is really interesting. We started to talk about this amongst ourselves last night at dinner and there were feelings. There were lots of feelings about tipping. They wanted to understand how customers respond to what they call tip surveillance. So there are quite a few studies looking at when and how customers are more likely to tip more or to tip less. And what's interesting is that the the research is sort of all over the place, but they were interested in not just tipping, but what they call non tip measures. So how does it impact a customer, let's say, coming back to this place again in the future or recommending this place to friends or family members, but also tipping. And they were interested specifically in something that they call tipping privacy. So they ran a few different experiments. They looked at 36,000 kind of field transactions and then they did 4 controlled experiments with 1100 participants and they compared setups that they kind of deemed had different levels of privacy. So handheld versus countertop payment systems, point of sale POS systems. They looked at times when employees like look at you while you're tipping or when they turn away or walk away. And they also looked at point of sale systems that either show the tips to employees and like you were asking about this just last night right away because you were like, do they know like what it's facing me? Do they?
J: I bought my kids hamburgers. This my wife is away. Long story. I'm like, OK, Wednesday night I'm super busy. I get the kids hamburgers right, So I go to five. Terrible father. Well, I did not get the milkshakes, so I am a tower. So I'm like there and I'm like, you know, typical scene. I'm buying them, I'm paying. And then the tip thing comes up and I have that thing where I'm like, shit, like she's standing right there. I'm like, I don't usually tip people like this. This is not where I tip people.
S: At a counter.
J: Yeah, at a counter at a fast food restaurant, like they're getting paid a wage, you know, it's not like they're, they're not like a under.
S: Yeah, you don't tip the person at McDonald's.
J: But the thing I didn't like, and I told the carer was like, I felt like she knew I didn't tip because she gave me. I probably thought. She gave me the stink eye. She. Gave me some type of stink eye that was there or not. It could have been produced in my head, but I felt guilty in that and I'm in that moment. I'm like, that sucks. It really is. It was uncomfortable.
S: For me, so I do think tipping should be basically anonymous, but I have to tell you about Perry's tip O meter. Have you ever heard? About this story.
E: So I'll take half credit for that.
S: Perry All right, everything gets half credit. Perry had this idea. You want to do it to to create this product where it called, he called the Tipper meter. He talked about it every time he went to a restaurant. And basically like imagine a little cardboard thing you put on the table. It's got a dial that goes from zero percent to whatever 30% and you said it and as the service throughout the meal, you raise or lower the tipper meter based on their performance.
C: Yes, it's flipping the script back on that they're.
S: Being transparent about how much tip they're getting and you will change it. So if they're late, like the tipper meters going down. So since then we always like whenever, if there's any bad service at a meal room, they oh, there it goes. The tornado, it's going down.
B: I could see Perry actually waiting for them to come and in front of them while looking at them moving the tip of meter back down.
C: And so this would have been an era where the most common place to tip was at a full service restaurant. And now you tip for everything, everything. And that's really what these researchers were interested in is the fact that this kind of like tipping economy has become really large. And they were looking at it from a psychological perspective. So they were looking at different constructs, things that they called perceived control and perceived generosity. And they found that when somebody had diminished perceived control, so when they felt like they had less control over the situation, they actually tended to tip more. But when they had diminished perceived generosity, they tended to tip less. But overall, they found that less privacy means better non tip responses. So the impact on how much people tipped was actually kind of wiggly because as you can imagine, if somebody's staring at you, you might feel guilted into tipping more, or you might be angry and tip less, but you're less likely to come back. You're less likely to be a repeat customer, You're less likely to tell people that they should go to this place. And so they looked at all of these non tip responses that actually haven't really been researched in the literature and they found that overall, from a business perspective, if you don't give somebody privacy while they tip, it's bad for business.
US#03: That's good.
C: But but the industry generally thinks and and has been operating under a principle that reducing privacy increases tips. But just because that's sometimes the case, in the long run it probably will reduce business. So it's an interesting phenomenon, right? Do you want somebody to tip because they feel guilty?
J: Yeah. I mean, I would think as a rule of thumb, anytime you are knowingly letting your customer feel uncomfortable during the process of dealing with that business, that's bad. Because again, that moment I had it, Five Guys. Like again, I have a lot of hamburger joints I can go to. Like I don't want to stand there and feel weird buying a hamburger for my kid.
C: And to be fair, the employees in this study, they talk about how employees feel weird about that too, Like they don't enjoy it, It's uncomfortable for them. And they in asking a lot of employees in previous studies, a lot of employees don't really know what the policy is or how they're supposed to act during that point of sale process. But just As for a little bit of context, because I didn't mention this at the top, digital tipping is practiced in over 100 countries and in the United States alone just tips $153.4 billion a year and 54.2 billion of that via via like a digital point of sale. So lots of, lots of money there.
S: You know what the tip reported.
C: That's reported, yeah. Right, there's all kinds of that. Cash.
E: Tips that goes on reported probably double, I don't think almost.
J: I don't know if other people feel this way, but I'm never in a I'm being tipped situation, right? So I feel kind of that sucks.
C: But we are tipped through Patreon.
J: You don't have an answer for that.
C: But isn't Patreon like tipping they're.
J: Getting a service we.
S: Get tipped when we do our live stream people literally tip us.
C: Should we put?
J: Have never seen any of that money, No.
S: Yeah, because Ian is in charge of that.
C: Ian, did you add a tip line? No.
S: I would be happy if just all tipping got eliminated. Pay people a little. I mean, does it really serve a purpose at this point other than to?
J: It saves the employer money.
S: It saves the employer money, that's what I'm saying, yeah.
J: So it allows them to hire people.
S: Ostensibly ostensibly the idea is like with the tipper meter, like you are improving your quality of servers because that is directly tied to how much money the server is going to make. Have any of you guys ever like deliberately left a really low tip as an F you've?
E: Seen the server.
S: Because no, really really bad I've. Never done it but I've seen.
C: That I can't do it. I can't remember.
S: Yeah, it's a state I remember.
C: Ever doing that, I'm just at a place now where I just tip flat every single time. I tip 20% on everything no matter what it is.
B: I just feel. Do you ever go above that? Do you ever go above?
C: Yeah, I've definitely gone above that, but it would be nice to be in a culture where everybody is paid an appropriate living wage and a tip is never expected, but it's welcome when somebody has does something exceptional like that was lovely.
E: And most of Europe has this. I think this is primarily an American.
C: Well, 100 countries.
E: That's the electric tip. That's the E tipping.
C: Yeah, we talked about yeah, but E tipping is not.
E: But customary my understanding is that most European countries did not have this tipping culture even before the E tip or anything else.
C: Yeah. Some do, some don't, and they have different levels of what's an expected tip, but it's increasingly expected across the globe. Like that's the thing, we're only seeing this ticking up.
J: There's lots of unanswered questions here. Well, first of all, we're not informed. Like when I went into that Five Guys, I don't know how much that person's making. I honestly don't know if like, you're supposed to tip now, you know, like I know.
S: It's kind of ask like when I went to the Eau and never been there before, right? I went to Dubai and my first encounter with a potentially tippable situation with, you know, the driver running from the airport. Like do people tip in this country? You know, you said yes, I don't know that's true or not. It's like, Oh yes, we get.
C: We get 70%, yeah.
E: Right.
C: Yeah, you can ask and you can do that research beforehand. You know, I am seeing, I, I live in LA, so I live in a, a large metropolitan city like DC and at some like nicer restaurants, I do notice that there will be on the ticket in order to provide a living wage or blah, blah, blah. We have this set fee. Any, anything additional you can pay above it. Sometimes I kind of like that clarity, you know what I mean? Like this is just how much it is for you to dine here. It would be nice though if it was like just pay them more but I guess they can't afford to.
S: And sometimes, like both of our meals at our hotels so far this weekend, they added the tip automatically. Like it's not even a choice, they just add it in.
C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
S: So that's the same thing. I'm just add it to the price.
C: Yeah, no, totally. And we're one of the only country countries in the world where we have to calculate our own tax. Like most countries, the price on the thing includes the VAT. It's super weird that we when people come here, they're like, why did it cost more than it said it would cost? Into the. Yeah, sorry.
US#04: There was a great Simpsons episode where part of Springfield got rid of tipping and Homer like moved there and that.
C: Yeah.
US#04: There's a whole thing about it actually addressed all these issues.
C: It was really, Yeah, My, I have like some really dear friends that live in Oregon. I went there for the Thanksgiving holiday and I sometimes visit up there and I do like to buy, like, upgrades for my truck while I'm there 'cause I don't have sales tax. Yeah. And it's like a huge difference. Yeah.
S: Guys know who this person is on the screen?
JonBenet Ramsey Case (11:55)[edit]
- JonBenet Ramsey: What we know about the child beauty queen’s death, the botched investigation and decades of mystery [2]
S: Anybody know who that is? Yeah. Jon Benet Ramsey. So she, she was murdered in 1996 at around Christmas. So around this time of year, I deliberately used a picture for her. Not made-up for, you know, the pageant. The pageant. Yeah. Because that's always the picture. Like, this is a brief, you know, portion, you know, small slice of her life. That's all everyone knows about her. But anyway, there's a renewed interest in this case. This is like one of the most famous murders in America, still unsolved. And it's really is a lot of interesting skeptical lessons in this case that I thought would be fun to go over. But first, I want to survey the audience about their attitudes. So based upon what you know about this case, and you may not have thought about this for 20 years, based upon your memory and your knowledge, George, you're going to do the one thing. So if you think the family was in any way involved with her murder, then clap. When George does the clap thing. If you think that the family was not in any way involved, clap. If you think that there was an intruder unrelated to the family that murdered her, clap. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, clap.
US#04: And if you murdered Jonbenet, clap. No one. No one. Has been a while. So have I mean, do you guys have any strong opinions on the panel about?
C: I haven't really followed it, there's like some new documentaries and stuff. So yeah, it was at.
US#04: The time the family just seemed so creepy and weird at the time I remember thinking like OK don't. Just because someone's creepy and weird doesn't mean they're.
S: The family seemed creepy and weird.
US#04: Yeah, it was weird, but. It doesn't mean that they're capable of that kind of a crime. So you had to keep like reminding yourself like.
C: But also, isn't it?
US#04: Creepy, weird people don't necessarily automatically kill their children.
C: But it's usually the family, right?
US#04: Of course, because the family's to investigate the family.
C: Like, I think I actually was just reading an article that like, statistically the home is the most dangerous place for a woman, right? Like like by leaps and bounds. Why is?
E: That well, because they're.
C: Home intimate time, intimate partner violence. No, like it's the most the most violence perpetrated against women are perpetrated by fathers, husbands, cousins, things. Like that, just strangers. OK, yeah, that's terrible. I know that it is terrible and most people don't know that.
S: Having lived through this, definitely, if you read the even just the mainstream news reporting about this case, there was this sense that there was something going on in the family, there was something weird going on here and there was a lot of details that were dropped by the police to the media to indicate that it's all complete bullshit. The interesting thing was this, this whole controversy was generated by the police who were grossly incompetent in their investigation of the case and the tabloid media. So they basically fed the tabloid media. And interestingly, again, I don't know if you remember this at the time, but this is the late 1990s. This was a time in American culture where daytime TV was just going crazy, right? This is a code before social media hit and there was this competition for shock daytime television, right? And so this mainstream media trend sort of, they basically took the tabloid reporting of the misinformation coming from the police and just rank speculation by amateurs and parlayed that into this whole story. But it was vapor. It was nothing. And and now like looking back on it, you could say, well, look, what are the actual facts of the case? And George, you're right, you have to remind yourself to be skeptical about this sort of stuff. So to quickly review the details, you know, the night of Christmas, her family was out, you know, for dinner, they came back, everyone went to bed. You know, the, the mother, Patsy Ramsey was the 1st to get up The next morning, she's coming down the stairs and there's pieces of paper on the staircase. Turns out it was a ransom note. It was a really weird ransom note. It was genuinely a weird ransom note. Very long kind of rambling, asking for a very weird specific amount of money, $118,000. There were lots of themes in there that kind of echo movie themes. So, you know, the mother reads us panics, runs up to her daughter's room, She's not there. She calls 911, says there's been a kidnapping. You know, you know, the family searches the house, they don't find her. The police come and they're treating it like a kidnapping, right? But they're immediately suspicious of the of the parents for whatever reason. Again, just statistically speaking, there's also, this is in Boulder, Co. They get about 1 murder per year there.
C: That's it in Boulder Safe place.
S: So they don't have a lot of experience with these kinds of situations. And so they're treating it like a kidnapping. They allow, you know, people are coming and going inside the house. Their friends, you know, the priests come over. And like the time frame of the when they're supposed to be getting hearing from the kidnappers is approaching. At one point, a few hours later, there's just one police officer left in the house with the father and a friend. And, like, just to keep them busy, she says, why don't you guys search the house again? So the father, John John Ramsey, and a friend go. They start in the basement. They notice a few things that are odd. There's a window that's broken. It's another window to the outside that's open. There's a suitcase under the window that doesn't belong there, as if somebody used it as a stepping, you know, platform to get up to the window. They go to a closed door in the back of the basement and she, her body's behind that door, right? So the father's the one to find her. He panics because of course he did pulled off the like the tape from her mouth, you know, and grabbed her, brought her up completely destroyed the crime scene, right, and brought her upstairs. So now it's a murder investigation. So that's the, that's the basic facts of the case. Now the, the police officers, the Boulder, the Boulder police officers immediately think, oh, this is, you know, like most of the cases, it's the family, right? So they, they start trying to build this case against the family that it was either the mother or the father. The the real skeptical lesson. And this happens over and over again with high profile cases. And it's really, it's always interesting to watch really the well done documentaries after the fact where you have like when like actual professionals finally come on the scene and do actual investigation. And you look at the hard evidence and you see that there, you know, these police officers basically just had a conspiracy theory and they were using they were violating every law of skepticism, critical thinking and good investigation to feet to shoehorn the evidence into their pet theory. So we have like this incredible speculation and we have some hard evidence where we could say pretty confidently some pieces to this puzzle. So one piece of very hard evidence is the autopsy, right? So that's pretty solid evidence. The autopsy showed that.
J: This is going to be harsh, by the way.
S: It's, it's harsh, guys. You know the case. This is the terrible, terrible case. I won't necessarily have to tell you the worst details, but basically she was strangled while she was alive and she had a head wound, either one of which could have killed her, right? The strangulation could have killed her. The head wound could have killed her. So the the pathologist has said they both contributed to her death. But it's critical that she was being strangled while she was alive, right? That's critical to understanding the case. They also found that, you know, she was sexually assaulted and that there and there was samples, there was saliva, DNA on multiple parts of her clothing, you know, whatever. So there's basically 2 theories of this case. 2 broad theories of this case 1 is that someone in the family did this and not they don't think the police didn't think that she it was somebody in the family sexually abused her necessarily. The theory was that someone in the family killed her and then staged. The whole scene to cover up an accidental killing or a killing in rage or whatever. The other theory that there was a there was an intruder that came in the house, kidnapped her, you know.
J: But it was a premeditated ransom note there, though, like, is that correct? Yeah. And, and you know, I'm sure that they did like the handwriting thing or.
S: There's There's so many details to this case though, So the handwriting doesn't match anybody in the house. There was one of the things the tabloids ran with was that again, there's a lot of fake experts came out of the woodwork to make lots of just BS kind of pronouncements. So Patsy Ramsey was ruled out multiple times by forensic analysis, analysis at the handwriting. But then you have somebody who's not really an expert says, well, there's features in there that she could have been disguising her handwriting. So it's this special pleading, right? It's like, well, it doesn't match her handwriting. Well, she was disguising her handwriting and maybe she wrote it with her left hand or whatever that gets out in the tabloid as they've matched the handwriting to Patsy Rant. Yep. Right. But it was it was nonsense. It was always nonsense. Well.
C: Why don't we start with the DNA evidence?
S: Yeah. So the DNA evidence is incredibly important. So they found DNA and using it, the technology at the time, they were able to to type it. And it's a male DNA, male Caucasian DNA was their conclusion. But it didn't match anybody in the family, didn't match anybody associated in any of the neighbors, anybody, somebody on their long list of potential people associated with the crime. The Boulder police said It's, you know, could have been just quick contamination like unfortunately, their own incompetence makes that not unlikely. But was.
C: It oh, I thought it was a semen sample.
S: No semen. There was no semen, but there were fluids but no semen.
J: Wait, they think a sailor killed her?
S: So, so think about this. They dismiss one of the most ironclad pieces of evidence in the case.
C: Yeah, like that's what the Innocence Project uses now to exonerate people who are falsely.
S: So that was in 2003, they got the DNA analysis. In 2008 they did further DNA analysis using a new technique called trace DNA or touch DNA, where you could use even just a few skin cells to get DNA right. And they found DNA on the on her pajamas matching the DNA that was found in the crotch of her underwear, which as one researcher put it, there is no innocent explanation, right, for your DNA being in the crotch of a six year old's underwear that just, there's no innocent explanation for that.
C: Right, and it was all from an unknown male from.
S: An unknown male but that matched the DNA on the pajama. They have two independent DNA samples from the same person.
J: But I know, I know not to really try to focus on something irrelevant, but like, you know, like I fold my kids laundry.
S: Yeah, like, but you're the. Father.
C: You're the father. This is an unknown male.
J: So the family was excluded.
S: If it was the father, he would say I, you know, I dressed her and whatever you could, you could, you could say maybe the so no.
J: Foreign person, their DNA shouldn't be in the house, let alone in her. Underwear, so and.
C: On her clothes, assuming it didn't match anything in a database.
S: Didn't match anything in the the database either. So again, so at that led the the Colorado DA to write a letter of apology to the Ramses, forever putting suspicion on them. It's like you're excluded 100%.
J: And this was 20 years.
S: This is no. This is 2008. So that was 10 years, 10 years later. That was 12. Years.
J: I thought it happened. In 9696. I'm off by a decade, sorry.
S: So, but the police were relentless in their theory that one of the Ramses did it. So one of the police officers, his theory was this is just ridiculous that the mother, you know, in a fit of rage, which is in no part of her history as a human being, right, in a fit of rage, killed her daughter because she wet the bed. And then they staged everything to cover it up. So they say, well, the staging theory fails because what did I say? She was strangulated while she was alive, right? So if your theory is that she was hit in the head, either there was that theory and then there was a theory that the brother Burke hit her in the head with a flashlight because she stole his snacks. Again, these are ridiculous theories. And if you have a theory that there was some, you know, fatal violent act, that usually happens in the context of other physical abuse, right? There was no history of physical abuse in this family, in this girl's life. There was no history of violence in the mother, in the brother, nothing. There's nothing. It's just an ice completely would be an isolated incident. So they said, well, if she was alive or she was strangulated and they did the strangulation to cover up and actually whatever the blow to the head, how did that work out? So they said, well, maybe she didn't realize she was still alive when she strangulated her to to stage the outside predator.
J: So I have a question.
S: That so that's like the mother of all special plea is.
J: Strangulated. A real word?
S: Yeah. Strangulated.
J: Does it sound weird to anybody else? Yeah.
C: Strangled.
J: Strangulate. It sounds like something like Bugs Bunny would say, Seriously, I strangulate. It's like, is that real? It's real.
C: So.
J: Strangulation. So. Strangulated though sounds weird. I don't think you should we.
C: Usually say strangled, yeah, but.
J: It's a technical medical term, Jay. All right.
C: What I'm hearing, though, is kind of a larger sociologic issue, which is very American, or maybe we can even say very Western, which is this tendency for individuals in positions of authority to not be willing to change course. That somehow that leads to blowback or feedback that they are incompetent or that they aren't strong or, you know, these other sort of like toxic. But ultimately, these kinds of tendencies are bigger than the police, right? They're bigger than politicians, and they're bigger than you and me. But they're it's like an American ethos that sort of poisons everything.
US#04: Why is it so appealing to? And appealing is the wrong word. But there is this fascination, fascination with the idea that, like, a mother could do this. I mean, there's entire networks on television. They're dedicated to murder. You know these weird murder stories, Like, what is it about?
C: Us well, mothers can do this, absolutely. Fathers do it more often, but others can do.
US#04: I'm saying a relative that like, like, yeah, that you want to, you want to hear that? It's a more of a. Story of a random person kind of breaking in and that's a horrible thing that you'll be interested in when it turns out it's this perfect family Yeah. And the father was actually this deep. Like why is? That watch the movies right, this is the movie but that's.
C: Interesting because I see it the other way around. It is most often the family, but people tend to be really obsessed and they tend to assume that random violence is more common and they're more afraid of strangers. But that's not the case usually. I think people are just morbidly curious about like people watch murder shows before they go to sleep. My view is it's it's it's about mortality salience, right? Like we're a very death denying culture. And so we are, but everybody's fascinated with death because we're all going to die. And it's like really existentially threatening. And so we find safe ways to exercise that curiosity. And weirdly, true crime has become like a very. Is.
US#04: It a is it a desire for justice to on some part like where you feel like OK when these monsters are caught?
C: And then?
US#04: It's like, OK, someone's in charge, someone's taking care of this, you know, However they get caught. I wonder if that's part.
C: Of it, yeah. And it's also, again, an American ethic of like, stranger danger. Like we, not a lot of other cultures really dig into this the way that we do. So if we can keep everybody scared of their neighbors and then, you know, everybody's on kind of high alert. But then, oh, the bad guy went away. Justice has been restored, and now I can sleep well at night. I think there's.
S: AI think in this case there was pressure to like play down the intruder and like even the mayor of Boulder was like we have no intruder wandering around the streets.
C: Right. Yeah, because they don't want public.
US#04: Right, the idea that. Beaches are safe. Yeah, the beaches are safe.
S: So she threw the family under the bus in order to say our city is safe, basically. So wow. Yeah, it was. That's infuriating. It was infuriating. You watched it? And I was infuriated by the fact that it's like, oh shit, I bought into this theory. Whatever 20.
US#04: Oh, yeah, It's a good lesson. It's a really good. I mean, look, I mean, half the audience clapped at the yeah, and it's not your fault. It's just that. That was it.
S: And The thing is because the information was coming from the police and the and not the tabloids, but like actual mainstream media and the and at the time, you know, I didn't I would had not an insufficient awareness of how absolutely incompetent police can be, especially when they're not. This is not what they do right? This is unusual. This was they were all out of their depth. I mean, again, they blew it from the get go. He'd tell the father to go search the house. One of the police officers went down into the basement, saw the broken window, went over to that door, saw that the door was locked from the inside and didn't open it. Well, the the if there were an intruder, he didn't get out this way. Well then it didn't didn't open the door that she that her body was behind. Just incompetence. Just gross incompetence.
C: But also the media, you know, the media response to that is the reason it's like, yes, there's gross incompetence and that's the reason that everything failed here. But the media response is the reason that you, looking back, are like, oh, I bought a hook line. Yeah, I. Totally.
S: Gosh. Yeah, but The thing is, even even if you're, you were trying to be like dismissing the tabloids and going, well, what are the police saying? The police were feeding misinformation to the media deliberately to point a finger at the family because they were frustrated that the DA wasn't wasn't pursuing the case because the DA was like, you have nothing. I can't. In fact, there was a a grand jury indicted them. The parents, the parents indicted, indicted them. But the DA was like the DA just said we're not going forward with the case. And it didn't come out to like five years later that they actually voted to indict the parents.
C: Interesting.
S: But the DA said it would be unethical to pursue a case. I know I can't win, Yeah.
C: We do that on the evidence here. But what's interesting to me, I mean that that is an interesting phenomenon and it's a huge bummer and worrisome that it probably happens a lot more often than we'd like to admit. But the media narrative, I think about the and like, however you feel about it, fine. I'm not going to open that can of worms. But the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trials and watching the documentary special where they literally just showed transcripts and they showed what happened in court and they showed kind of his perspective and her perspective, and she was eaten by the media. Like just ruined by the media. And then when you watch what actually transpired, you're like, Oh my God, that was all narrative. All narrative. So a narrative part.
S: The layer one of the layers of this case is that was the pageant thing. And so the tabloids ran with endless pictures of her, you know, dolled up in a in a little girl pageant. And then everyone got judgy about that. Everyone was like, oh, what kind of parents would would sex up their daughter like that? Like, you know, first of all, they had a normal life. This was the mother was up was into pageantry when she was younger. Natural, you know, to have the same thing with your daughter that the in the audience were all family members. You anybody whose parents here, you know, you go to an event where your kids doing anything performative, it's all parents in the audience. That's what was going on, right? And they, they, but they parlayed that into there's something sick going on here. But it was really ridiculous. But but it was great tabloid pictures, great tabloid headlines.
J: Did the police ever get called out on this?
S: Totally. Well, first of all, there were two lawsuits. At least, you know, in this case, 1. So one of the investigating detectives had the theory that Patsy Ramsey killed her and then staged everything and dismissed the DNA, dismissed a lot of evidence. And they also, I mean, they throw out so much like there was no tracks in the snow. This I'll get I'll circle back to your point. And it turns out. So what's interesting was that the DA, the DA and the police did not get along right. The DA said, you guys are screwing this up. You know, I don't agree with your theory of the case. The police were frustrated that the DA wasn't pursuing their theory of the case, which is that the family did it. So the D the DA called in out of retirement, a really highly respected investigator and this was Lou Smith and, and he completely investigated the case and is like this was an outside intruder. Hello. There was so many signs of an outside intruder. But one of the things was the police said there's no tracks in the snow. They looked at pictures of the house. There's no snow. Around the house?
E: Well, they weren't lying.
S: Snow there was like a dusting somewhere on like one side, whatever, but you could easily get to and from the house without ever passing through snow. That was the level of incompetence that we were dealing with. But they fed that to the meet the media. Police say no tracks means an inside. It was an inside. Job and they, you know, I, I believe that if they were competent, they could have caught. Well, yeah, maybe the only way to really catch the killer is through DNA. We'll get to that when I finish up. But so the there was a lawsuit against that detective who who thought who wrote a whole book saying Patsy Ramsey did it, basically that was settled for undisclosed amount, but almost certainly in the millions. And then then Geraldo Rivera did a mock trial where they basically said that the son, the brother Burke did it, which is ridiculous. He got sued, CBS got sued. Like whatever all the producers got sued again settled for undisclosed amount again almost certainly in the millions. So that so there was there were successful loss, successful settled, you know, lawsuits because the family was they were destroyed.
C: Yeah, how sad that they had in the media. I'm sure they didn't want to have to sue like that's.
S: Not they were just they were, you know, they spent all their money defending themselves on private investigating everything. It was just they were completely destroyed.
C: They never got to be appropriately more in the loss of their daughter. It was immediate.
US#04: I mean, tail end of the whole Satanic Panic thing, Yeah, like the Satanic 80s into the early 90s. And this was like a a way to maintain that craziness. It's a Satan thing, but these are like real. Satan people.
S: So there's a, there's a big push to to the case is open, but there's a big push push to try to close this case using modern DNA techniques. They actually have DNA evidence that they've never typed. They have additional DNA evidence and we could use modern techniques in order to get more, basically more samples of DNA typed and we can do something that's called DNA genealogy. And they have captured criminals in this way. So yeah, they whoever did this is not in the database.
C: Which is so surprising to me that if somebody committed a child rape that they never did it again or.
S: They probably went out of country.
C: Could be, yeah, yeah.
S: There was one car, there was one suspect. Who? Man, this guy, I mean, if you know, but clinically just like based upon like his story and everything he would, they caught him in Taiwan, in Bangkok and he had a really good story to tell about how he killed her. And he apparently like knew details of the case that were not generally known, but he was cleared by the DNA. So but what what the car case shows that I think he just fantasized about being the person who killed. Her. Either that or the DNA, you know, was contamination, right, but the if the if he was really excluded by the DA and then he basically let him go. He just is left the country to go rape more kids. I mean, this guy was found at a girl's elementary school like creeping on girls when they picked him up. This guy is a pedophile, right? This guy car and he was like one of the investigators was talking to him and emailing to him for years before they picked him up. So, and he had a, you know, he told a very convincing story, laying out everything that happened. He was just going to kidnap her. That's why he left the kidnapping note. And then he, she didn't intend for her to die. But he got too enthusiastic about the strangulation and you didn't realize it. And then, you know, and then he did hit her in the head to make sure that she was dead. But he, you know, and he sounded, sounded very convincing. But what that shows is even if he's not the person who did it, it's like you can make a story out of all those weird details of the case. Like the intruder hypothesis is perfectly plausible because some weird creepo like this could have absolutely done that. This guy may have just been fantasizing about it.
C: So you started to mention that they can use DNA genealogy.
S: So DNA genealogy is essentially you find people related to the killer and you just, you build a genealogy and then you eventually lead your way back to close to the killer. Yeah. And then you go, you know.
US#04: So they got the Golden State Killer.
S: People who are ready, yeah, they caught killers doing.
C: Yeah, I interviewed the woman who the researcher. Yeah, on my podcast too. So it is.
S: How old is that technique?
C: I don't think it's that. I mean, a few decades. I mean, she's older now, yeah, but.
S: So it's possible in a few years, you know.
C: We may I think there are like ethical questions about using it and you know, because without.
US#04: The use of the genealogy databases from like, you know. 23.
C: Million stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's really nebulous, but yeah.
US#04: Yeah, yeah. Any other nice Christmas stories, Steve? You got? Yeah, Steve.
C: What the Well, I think. They I.
S: Mean, you know, re emerging immersing myself in this case, I'm like, damn, this was like there were so many skeptical red flags here, so much special pleading. The investigators essentially they violate like rule #1 of investigation is you don't get married to your pet hypothesis. And then, you know, start to Marshall all of the evidence and reasoning and motivated reasoning and confirmation bias all in that One Direction. It's like Sherlock Holmes said, right? If you hypothesize before you have facts, you end up twisting the facts to meet the hypothesis rather than the hypothesis to meet the facts. And that's 100% what they were doing in this case. And it, you know, it's not the only big public case. If for those of you who are interested, you know, watch the recent documentaries on the Menendez brothers. That's another one that the media completely blew and created a completely false narrative. And they were they were treated harshly. We even talked about this is not a murder case, but we talked about Yoko Ono, right? The fact that like the world owes her an apology for completely creating this false narrative.
US#04: About that, she broke up The Beatles anyway.
C: It's always a woman's fault, Yeah, I think. Foreigner.
US#04: Woman especially.
C: Yeah, These stories also highlight, I think, one of the things that as skeptics, we probably should cover more. We cover it on the show sometimes, but it's just the rank pseudoscience in forensic and how often things that we thought really held water just don't stand up to good scrutiny. So we've got to be really careful about.
US#04: Television ruining the expectations too, like all those CSI shows. Ruining the expectations of what?
C: People. Think Enhance.
US#04: Yeah, right. Enhance.
C: Zoom. In.
Primordial Black Holes (39:04)[edit]
S: I wanted to talk about primordial black holes. All right, go ahead.
B: You've got 3 minutes. Bob Go.
S: Ahead, I could talk about it if you want me to.
B: Oh. Don't need you, Steve. All right, go ahead. All right. 60 seconds, Bob Go. 60 seconds Primordial black holes in the news, scientists have been coming up with a wacky idea. It seems a little wacky when I read about it, to find primordial black holes by looking for hollow planets and microscopic tunnels in asteroids and and planets and things. This is in a journal, Physics of the Dark Universe. The title is searching for small, all primordial black holes in planets, asteroids, and here on Earth. All right, So what are primordial black holes? These are black holes. They're just like any other black hole that we've talked about on the show, except the origin is different. Black Conventional black holes are created by gravitational collapse of stars, right? Stars are exploding and collapsing, creating black holes, and they're merging, making them even bigger black holes. But primordial ones are created before stars even existed. They existed. Some people think perhaps now these are hypothetical. Remember, these are purely hypothetical. There's no real evidence that they exist. But they believe they could have been formed in a few seconds after The Big Bang, which seemed a little early to me. Steve, right? I didn't think, I don't know. It just seemed like it would wait.
S: Lots to settle down those first few seconds.
B: Oh, I know they they track it by like millisecond milliseconds. You have these major things happening, but essentially intense energy densities in the early universe can create enough energy in one spot, right? Because you don't need just need mass energy can can create something like a black hole if you have enough energy in one spot. And so they think that's what happened during that time. It created a new innumerable primordial black holes, some big, some small, right, Some that probably have already evaporated, right, because it's been like 13 1/2 billion years. So if you if it was small enough, it could have potentially already evaporated, but other ones could still be around. Now, the, the primordial black holes that we're concerned about here are on on the small side, not not big ones. So we're talking about something like with the mass of a of a small planet or an asteroid. But if you have that mass and you squeeze it down into a black hole, we're talking tiny black holes like the size of an atom, the event horizon. You couldn't.
J: Even they could see that small.
B: Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
J: I had no idea.
B: If you collapse the earth into a black hole, it would be about as big as a marble, but if you do less than that, it's going to be so small that you couldn't even see but.
J: Subatomic.
B: Not subatomic, I mean size of an atom, atomic size. I mean sure, or even smaller. They wouldn't let Jane remember. The smaller you go, the less master is that they wouldn't last very long. They would just evaporate in a puff of walking radiation.
J: Yeah, but I mean, the reason why I'm not understanding it is like if it was the size of an atom, how many atoms could be in that space at the same time, Jay?
B: Infinite density, man. I mean, I'm talking, you know, I mean, not really infinite. We just, our math breaks down. We don't know what the Hell's going on in this. OK.
J: At least you gave an honest answer.
B: Yeah. Now The thing is that these primordial black holes could have tremendous utility. I thought that, oh, they couldn't find them. They've looked really hard. They haven't been able to find them. Oh well. But there's there. They can have so much potential utility. The most important one in my mind is they could. It could be dark matter, potentially. Sometimes I just think that black, these black holes could account for the dark matter that makes up the majority of the matter, the mass in the universe. We have no idea what this stuff is. That would be amazing. But what? Keep touching my knee. But these primordial black holes could also be responsible for primordial gravitational waves, the magnetic monopole problems, you know those problems. But they could also be the seeds for supermassive black holes because some black holes are so big. We're like, how did it get that big? The universe is not old enough to have a supermassive black hole that big.
J: How big is the black hole? So big.
B: So it could be responsible for the creation of supermassive black holes that got their start the early universe before stars even existed, and even intermediate mass black holes could have a seed of a primordial black hole in its origin.
C: So gravitational waves, which the ones that we've measured come from the supermassive black holes, right?
S: Not super, not super massive, just big ones.
C: Just big ones, Yeah, just big ones. So.
B: Like, but they're but they're surprising though, because they're because they're intermediate mass. Like where do these intermediate mass black holes? We could explain the big ones kind of and the small ones kind of, but the mid mass ones, like how does that happen? So these might explain some some of that.
J: I think it makes sense that that some of the today's black holes date back all the way to the the original ones that were created. It makes sense, right?
B: Right. But we just don't have any evidence, and that's the big problem. Jake So how can we find? Can't find them. Yeah. You're pushing me along. So. All right, So the paper's premise, the the premise of the paper, before they even get into the meat of it, is that some scientists believe that primordial black holes can are inhabiting stars. They're they're in some main sequence stars, neutron stars, dwarf stars. They think they're potentially. Inside in a star in. The middle of a star I remember though, if you've got a small event horizon that's not a lot of surface area so you slowly will suck in stuff. It's not going to be like boom, everything going in that.
J: Doesn't make any sense.
B: Jay, think about it. The surface area is so tiny.
J: How tiny is it?
B: Atomic size that you you can't suck in stuff. A lot of stuff. They don't. Is not there they.
C: Don't suck.
J: Metaphorically, yeah. Yeah. But it would be like, how slow are we talking about? Like would it happen over a month?
B: No, I mean, I guess potentially millions of years. It wouldn't, it wouldn't suck in an entire star. You know, that's, that's, that's what they're saying. I. Don't. Know if. So the Oh yeah, well then you do you disagree with Stephen Hawking because Stephen Hawking believe. You screw. Him that there.
J: Still owes me money all right, until he pays that debt he skewed in my but.
B: He believed, he believed that there might be might be a black hole in in our sun, but that would be pretty cool. So that so that's the premise. So what these authors did is they took that premise and they ran with it and say that, well, maybe these super, these primordial black holes could be in other things, not just a star, but potentially small planets or, or, or other things, or even they might even create these microscopic tunnels as they go flying through.
J: Things, I mean, if they're that slow, they could be in you right now. Theory. But we'll get. There, Jay, we'll get there. I was kidding.
B: So, so that's what their paper they're, they're extending it to things like planet towards and moons and asteroids where you can potentially see the impact that a primordial black hole had with these objects. So the two big things I mentioned is they could potentially hollow out a small planet if it gets captured by the planet somehow or it somehow has the planet grow around it and slowly. It also needs liquid. It's got to have, it's got to have some sort of viscous liquid, not rocky material. But like our core is not really liquid. It's like, you know, it's very dense material, iron and stuff. So they think that it would it, it would slowly eat, it would slowly take in the the interior, the liquid interior of this small rocky planet and you would have a hollow planet. The other thing that they talk about is microscopic tunnels being created in in material like in in asteroids or even in the Earth. If you look in some of the ancient rock on Earth, if you look closely, you maybe will find some of these microscopic tunnels. They said that 110 quadrillion ton primordial black hole would leave behind a tunnel .1 microns thick. So this would be super, super tiny, but potentially, potentially discoverable that would that would point to evidence.
C: Would it would it appreciably increase the gravity on that planet?
B: If it's. So no, not really, because if it's if it's got the mass of an asteroid, you know.
C: But isn't that the point? That black? Hole.
S: So, all right, if I might.
C: Uh huh.
S: Well, what Bob's talking about is imagine like our moon. It captures gravitationally, captures a tiny primordial black hole which sinks to its center. It then sucks out all of anything that can move, even if it's very viscous, right? Leaving behind anything that can't move, like a solid rocky shell. Now, if we were observing that moon, it would look the same because it has the same mass. It's just we don't know that some of that mass has moved to a black hole, right? But.
B: But it would be their their big thing. Their big thing is that this is something that would be detectable and it would be very cheap. But wait, wait. Those are two very important considerations.
S: But you're missing the the the one piece.
B: I'm not missing anything, Go ahead if.
S: If in some way that black hole gets knocked out. Of it. Then you have a hollow moon, which will have the size of a moon, but be way less dense than it should. Be Could you live on the inside of that moon? That's not the.
C: Point well, they they quick and I know this might sound like a like a squabble, but would the moon have you you used a specific term? Did you say attracted the black hole or?
B: Gravitationally, you know, basically. It somehow got captured, but I think.
C: Gravitationally captured is what you said. Would the moon have gravitationally captured the black hole, or would the black hole have gravitationally captured the moon?
S: Who's ever bigger?
C: It's not who's bigger, it's who has a.
S: More mass depends on the size of.
C: The Primordial.
B: Right. I think, I think it would, I think it would depend, it would have to also be a relatively slow moving, slow moving capture for that for that to really happen, right? Because because that's that's part of it. Because if you have a very, very fast moving primordial black hole, that's what's going to leave those tunnels. And it's, they compared it to having a, a glass, a window. And if you throw a rock at it, it's going relatively slow. It's going to shatter everything. But if it's going fast enough, like a bullet, it's going to make a nice little hole. And that's, and that ties into what people's have said. Oh, could this be happening? Could I have a primordial black hole going through me or my cat? They said and they said that this is that they said it wouldn't be fatal if that happened. So what does that mean? Because you know, it could be devastating, but I think it would be such a tiny, it would be so fast and leave such a tiny hole that we would maybe not even know that it happened. How long until?
J: Pseudoscientists like turn this into like, you've got black holes in your in your butt. You know, they tried to sell some products.
B: You just say, well, what's the evidence? Is there a microscopic stupid?
J: People that buy stupid products if.
US#04: You theoretically could you theoretically use this as a tool though? Could you like if is there something preventing technology from from either creating? Like is there some physical rules that we would break where you wanted to use a primordial black hole for construction, let's say?
B: The if you look at some potential advanced technologies, the the main application for tiny black holes is for a rocket engine, because you could actually, if you can somehow now we're talking very, very small, it could be amazing power sources. But obviously the technical problems are are.
US#04: But there's no rules of physics, we have to.
B: Break No, right now, yeah, a black hole rocket engine is possible and it's pretty cool, fascinating and and it may be something that we will but. Even for like planetary mining or? Something 1000 years like.
US#04: Planetary mining like if you wanted to create like habitable, habitable, habitable. Habitable. Habitable Habitable let's say intercourse of planets where you would you would get this construction company that uses.
B: First they.
C: Going to make this is a theory though right?
B: This all theoretical.
C: So we live on a planet, and is there any reason to believe that there are any tunnels that are? Unaccountable well, that's just it.
B: They they recommend that we, it would be inexpensive to actually look and we could definitively or fairly definitively say, hey, this looks like a primordial black hole went through the Earth left this tunnel that we can detect or we, we detected multiple hollow planets that that make no sense except, you know, in the light of a primordial black hole interacting with it.
C: And not just the physical shape of the tunnel, but is there a way to measure the gravitational effect on like the alignment of atoms or something as it as it tunneled through?
B: I think it's so fast.
S: But we have a straight. Feature the feature that they're looking for is that it's a very long completely, perfectly straight line right hole, right? Because that's it would have to be something that's going in a straight line that would not be bothered by anything that would not be deflected by the granite or whatever it's going through. So it leaves a super long but super thin.
B: Right track the gravitational after effects would not really be anything that they're except for. The thing would be detectable except for the hollow the hollow Earth scenario, but the whole wouldn't.
C: That just overtime over like billions of years close in.
S: It has to be the material, a hard material that could.
B: Right. So say like big like plates of metal or but but even that if if this metal plate was created 100 years ago or 50 years ago, chances are it hadn't interacted with a black hole. But if it was like a planet or an asteroid that's been around even the Earth. Or even around billions of years.
S: 4 billion year old rock.
C: Right, this just seems like it's going to stay theoretical to me. I agree.
S: This is what?
B: You're saying they say this one like they have actually said it. It could be a one in a million shot of actually finding this. But if it did, if we have proof, it could potentially solve all those other problems. It's a dark matter. I mean, that's a huge, huge mystery in physics.
S: This is this is all very respective. They're just basically saying, all right, is there any possible way we could practically look for evidence that these primordial black holes actually exist? And these are the two things that they came up with and they're technically true. But the idea that this unlikely scenario it had to get it has to be captured by a planet that's big enough that it won't collapse in on itself, that has a liquid core, and then it gets ejected from it. So we could find just the right size planetoid that's hollow that used to have a primordial black hole in it. It's like, OK, that's possible. The chances of us finding something like that is pretty, pretty low.
US#07: Yeah.
S: Same thing finding a microscopic little hole, you know, through an ancient material. Calculate the Micron, even if it's 4 billion years old, there was still like a .000001 chance that they were going to find it. Right. They're just counting on the fact that it's technically cheap to do this, so you could do a lot of it, but I doubt this is ever going to bear fruit. True, it's really very, but it's interesting thought. Experiment.
B: But the other angle to this is that because I had written off primordial black holes, because they just, they looked and looked and could not. Find I wrote them off like I wrote them.
J: Off like I'm dumb with him.
B: But the recent findings from the gravitational wave Astronomy LIGO and James Webb Space Telescope, they are making discoveries now that are kind of pointing towards these primordial black holes. So that makes it even more interesting, fascinating with a potential payoff because they're actually saying, well, maybe they do exist based on what they're observing.
US#04: So we'll keep you updated.
Oldest Alphabet (53:42)[edit]
US#04: George, tell us about the oldest writing. So this is this. Is 2 stories that I found sort of together and this is one of these wonderful things that reveals archaeologically the oldest thing we know is the oldest thing we know until we find something older. And it's kind of cool how there isn't this dogma that's involved with archaeology of like, you know, this is the oldest thing. Anything older we're going to explain away. No, we change as as new evidence comes along.
E: As long as it lines up with the Bible, we're good as.
US#04: Long as it lines up with the Bible exactly. Exactly. Well.
E: In.
US#04: In Syria they found these in a in a city called Umm Almara. At a dig at the ancient city of Umm Almara in Syria, they found these little tiny clay like finger shaped little tubes that has what now is being assumed to be the earliest alphabet. And it's 500 years. Older than. What was considered to be the oldest alphabet coming up to it, which is really, really cool. They had this site. Archaeologists uncovered this tomb. It goes back to the early Bronze Age and in this site they had six skeletons, gold and silver jewelry, cookware, a spearhead and intact pottery vessels.
S: What was the spearhead made out of?
US#04: What was the what?
S: Was the spearhead made out of?
US#04: I don't know. It doesn't say.
S: How old are we talking?
US#04: This is 2400 BC, 2400 BCE. Next to the pottery, the researchers found 4 lightly baked clay cylinders with what seemed to be alphabetic writing on them. And so they're not sure what the language is, but previously, the oldest alphabet was thought to be in Egypt around 1900 BCE. So this is like 500 years, 5 centuries.
S: In a different part, in a different.
US#04: Country in a different country, a different sort of system of writing. And it's, it's pretty, pretty fascinating and exciting because it extends this idea of what languages to the human animal. Now, concurrent with that was another story that I found that says, you know, culture language is a very ancient human thing. And they just dated some stencils in a cave. Yeah. In Spain. So basically cave art. And this cave art is older than they thought. The oldest cave art is this. This cave art is it was thought to be the oldest cave art was 40,000 years old. This now is 66,000.
S: That's a big jump.
US#04: It's a big jump. 20,000 years older they.
S: Found do they do they know what hominid was there? Was it Neanderthal or from they're.
US#04: Saying Neanderthal. Yes, this is Neanderthal. And it's the first example of Neanderthal doing kvart.
S: Yeah.
US#04: And it's stencils. So they're they're projecting some kind of either their hand or some kind of some kind of design onto the wall and they're covering it in a pigment. Now the pigment that they use is mineral based is yeah, it's a mineral based pigment. So you can't carbon date that. Yeah. But what they do, what they figured out is because there are striations and growth on top of it, mineral deposits that happen on top of these drawings, they can take the stuff on top of it. You age that. And because it's on top of the ink or the OR the whatever they use to draw, it's going to be yeah, older than what's on top of it. Yeah, right. So the stuff on top of it they see is about 66,700 years old. It's got to at least be that old. Yeah, if not even older, right. So it's just so cool that like we, we have this modern bias of like, you know, Cavemen were, were Cavemen, you know, and here they are with art and and other stuff. These results suggest that the tradition of making hand stencils in Europe began long before they appeared in any other part of the world. The oldest known hand stencil art previous to this was in the Liang Temposen cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. That was about 40,000. Now this one in Spain is 66 that.
S: Yeah, yeah. Isn't that amazing? It's amazing.
US#04: It's just so cool and I love that process of like, how could we date this stuff? Oh yeah, we'll get the stuff that's on top of it. And what's nice is when they scrape the stuff on top of the art, they don't have to ruin the art at all. They don't affect it whatsoever.
J: Did you see the art?
US#04: I did not see any images. Of it, I would love to see that. Yeah, it's, they're very simple. They're very simple. And it's from from what they were saying, It's it's you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell right away that that is a stencil. But once they research and find out, that's what it is. So yeah, I just love that like artists were, you know, 66,000 years ago. You know, there's one guy in the village who's. Oh, that's Fred. Yeah. He does his great paintings. Yeah, he's cool.
B: But also. He's quirky, he's quirky, he's quirky, he's a little quirky. As a little you know but. Fred did Neanderthal. I mean the first is the 1st.
US#04: This is, yeah, the first examples of Neanderthal doing tape.
B: Yeah.
US#04: So that's the whole image of Neanderthals being these brutes is like completely wrong. Yeah, yeah. They're just they're.
S: Just, you know, the history of that, George.
US#04: Yeah, I'm sure they're, they're what what, what racism was involved in.
S: Well it's or it was just scientific malpractice. I mean it wasn't. I do agree that it was just general idea that well, older humans had to be primitive, but the very first Neanderthal skeleton was like was had.
B: A bad back it had.
S: Crippling arthritis, probably rickets or something. So it was hunched over little skeleton, they said. Well, they were at least hunchback little Cavemen, you know, that were dragging their knuckles along the ground. But it was completely a sampling bias, you know, that that happened to be the first one that they found. Neanderthals were robust. They were. They were. Yeah. They were physically, you know, bigger and stronger than we were, probably because they were adapted to the Ice Age. That was a cold adaptation. But cognitively, it's still an open question, like how close they were to modern humans. They were very close, but you know, were they just like the same but different? Or did Homo sapiens really have a cognitive advantage over Neanderthals?
E: Well, how big were their? Brains. Yeah, Brain.
S: Says they were bigger than ours, but they were everything was, you know, they were just robust. They actually had bigger brains than Homo sapiens. That's interesting, but it's but they had to do probably more to do just their overall robustness. And one of the key pieces of evidence to say, well, it was art. Like, did did Neanderthals have art as sophisticated and as early and whatever as Homo sapiens sapiens or not? And like, there's a whole debate still going on about whether they buried their dead and how that that data was interpreted. And that was kind of over interpreted. And it's not really as ironclad as we thought it was. You know, they said, oh, we found flowers in the grave. It turns out maybe not. You know, that evidence is actually dubious.
B: Yeah.
S: So there's a lot of open questions about that. You know, we definitely had. More sophisticated tool set eventually than they did, but that could be culture right? Doesn't necessarily mean that we were inherently smarter than they were so.
B: Maybe their tools didn't fossilize or no well.
S: That's you can. It's hard to make that argument. And especially we're basically in the Stone Age. But our stone tools are better than their stone tools, right? Just like with NASA, our Nazis are better than their Nazis. Our stone tool. Remember that from the right stuff anyway, our stone tools about their stone tools. And we you start to see like really finely crafted tools and tools that probably partly for artistic purposes and not purely utilitarian, like decorative, you know, kind of things all in in Homo sapiens. But again, how much of that is culture? And even if, like, we had more of an artistic kind of bent than Neanderthals, that doesn't necessarily mean that we were smarter than them in every way. It's just we just don't know. You know, they're so close, it's hard to tell. But something like this, like pushing back Neanderthal art, you know, 20,000 years, whatever, that's going to be a huge piece to this puzzle.
US#04: Yeah, over the years I've learned to lean into like think, appreciating and thinking that primitive quote UN quote cultures or people are way more, way more interesting and way more and and they have the same exact concerns and fears that.
S: We all do, I'm sure.
US#04: Like day-to-day living is not that different from like, from our day-to-day, you know, concerned about family, concerned about whatever politics are they at that time, you know?
S: Well, even calling them primitive now is that's what I mean is not accepted because it's like it's a judgmental, it's a you're assuming something that may not be true. They're pre technological. That's not the same thing as primitive. Right.
C: Is there an assumption that technology for like hunting and gathering came before technology for aesthetics?
S: Yes.
C: Why is that? I mean, I'm saying is that a base assumption or is that what the evidence plays out?
S: Well, there there are stone spear points that are, you know, millions of years old, but way before any evidence of any artistic expression.
C: But is that because of the?
E: Wait millions.
S: Yeah, yeah. Was using our Homo habilis. Yeah, ancestors had had weapons. Homo erectus, they haunted. Homo erectus goes back to what, 2.5 million years? They conquered the world because they were killing and hunting and cooking their food. Absolutely.
C: But is that because the things that would have been aesthetic maybe didn't keep?
S: Well, that's a huge debate is how much can we invoke this idea that, well, maybe they had wooden tools that didn't fossilize. Like, it's the problem with that is that there's no evidence for it. Yeah. Either find a way to to find evidence for that, or you can't hypothesize things for which there can't possibly be evidence. Right. We can't rule it out.
C: Well, you hypothesize I mean.
S: Yeah, it's just not useful to speculate about things that.
C: But it's also not useful to have evidence, for by definition they haunted before they made beauty. But. We don't know. That we don't know. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
S: All right.
C: That they didn't happen simultaneous, I think.
S: We're going to take a little break from the news items to do the Q&A. And George, you've been collecting fascinating, unique and insightful questions from our good ones.
US#04: Here I'm going to try to go through a couple of these that are that are that are quick answers to start with, so we can just burn through those and there's a couple that are maybe a little bit more more in depth. This was easy. This is for Jay. Do you play the guitar right-handed or left-handed?
J: I play the bass and the guitar left-handed.
US#04: Left-handed.
J: Yes, correct, I am. Five points.
US#04: This is for Bob if you could observe any object with the web Space Telescope. And this is from someone who works on web. What would you look at? Oh.
J: Bob, don't. That's your work, no?
B: Why wait? What this is? This is for anybody, I just wanted.
J: To how about a primordial black hole? There you go.
B: But I don't know, I guess. Yeah. Primordial. No, you can't. It's not like you can see it. I mean, I would say a neutron star, but I don't think, I'm not sure, James, would. It would have to be probably an exoplanet. Yeah. An exoplanet. An exoplanet that might have an atmosphere, Yeah.
C: So is it about finding something new or is it about seeing something cool? Because remember, we're talking about the James Webb. So it's pretty.
B: Yeah. What would you pick? Because it's. Pretty cool because finding something new I'm not gonna. I doubt I could find something.
C: New So what do you want to see? That's pretty.
B: Like a planet, atmosphere.
C: Yeah.
S: How about techno signatures?
B: Yeah, Techno.
US#04: Signatures if we could, if we had a candidate. That would be fantastic. OK. We'll make a list and we'll make that happen.
B: We'll e-mail.
US#04: Yeah, see. Yeah. OK, Now let's do this quick if we can. So I'm going to go down the line here, and it's going to be a little bit challenging, but this is actually a really good question. So we're going to start at the far end, start with Evan. So pick a favorite historical figure and show them something from today.
E: What do you mean show?
US#04: Them like like, like you can show an invention to, you know, da Vinci or like pick a historical figure and like, what would you show that person? Yes, pick a favorite historical figure. What would you most like to show them from the present?
J: Is it anybody that's dead?
C: I don't know how we're going to do this fast.
J: Yeah, if they're not dead, you could just show them. No, but I mean, what if they died like five years ago?
US#04: Whatever.
C: But is that really his story? I mean, yeah, technically it's his story. I.
US#04: Think you could? Yeah, Like, yeah, go ahead.
E: Mark Twain invented, right? A Wow. What the heck was it? Like a special musical instrument. And I think there's one on display at is if you get to West Hartford, CT, the Mark Twain House there, there's a museum next to the house. And among the things in there is this like one machine that was made. It's attributed to him like so many other things, but it's this incredible device. I'd have to look it UPS and that kind of just what sprung into my head, but if you want to move on, I'll try to find it in the meantime.
C: Can you describe it?
US#04: To show him, to show him that it's like in the museum.
E: Yeah, hang on. I will look it up if you want to move on and I'll come.
C: Back to it. I'll go. Yeah, I would show like a Ray Bradbury or a George Orwell, the things that they said were going to happen, happening like the Veldt. I would like show, I don't know, like a VR kind of situation or yeah, I would show the Big Brother surveillance. It's like actually happening. And then I'd probably also show them the things that they didn't think of, like the cell phone. Yeah, like the iPhone. OK.
S: Yeah, cool, Steve. Yeah, I would. How about I would get Ada Lovelace and show her a modern computer. I'd show her my cell phone.
US#04: Oh, I see. That's a very. Good answer. Yeah, Jay, what do you got?
J: I mean, I think, I think I'd want Michelangelo to see that David is still unbelievably revered. And I'd like to tell him like, it's probably the best piece of art that's ever been created.
US#04: Excellent answer.
B: Yeah, so I. Just a couple of months ago. It's amazing, but I would I would show Michelangelo a 3D printer. That's great.
C: It'd be like I can do that too I.
B: Was like I'm cranking out one of those two things every hour.
US#04: As a as a Doctor Who fan, I would love to have that scene happen where Van Gogh sees.
B: I thought of that too.
US#04: When you the the, you know, Doctor Who takes him to the museum and he asks the art expert explain how important Van Gogh was and explains it to Van Gogh. Yeah.
B: We gotta watch that again.
US#04: It's so good. I would I would do that. I would to let this know this tormented guy like, oh man, you're amazing. Very good question. That's a fun. That's cool. As someone said, Jay, will you sign my forehead? I.
S: Mean. Yeah, OK.
US#04: Good.
S: In what though blood?
US#04: This was asked a couple times in a couple different ways and I want to, I want to ask it, it's about it's basically, how can you make your memory better? Are there practices? So yeah, one says.
E: Write things down. There's so.
US#04: Many things to learn how do you how do you. Fit so much knowledge in your brain and is it at all possible to increase 1 long term memory capacity like three people asked a very.
S: Soon I have I have a good answer to that question.
C: And I probably you might not.
US#04: Remember writing that question? But you wrote that question down so.
S: Yeah. So mnemonics is one way mnemonics, is it?
C: Well.
S: You could use mnemonics. That's kind of you're basically using techniques to remember specific things that you have to remember. But if you just want to improve your overall memory, actually the number one thing you could do is exercise. Use it is physically exercise. Your brain health, your brain function is what's the biggest determining factor, just your overall brain function. Good sleep is close second, especially with memory. People who don't sleep well, they're like, they always complain about their memory. It actually causes what we call pseudo dementia. You have really bad sleep. I mean, they think they're demented. They're not, but they just say, I can't remember anything, Say, well, you're not sleeping, that's why. But in terms of this like a learning, a studying technique, I think I heard that in those questions as well, what the evidence shows is that repetition is key, but you want to do repetition at increasing intervals.
E: Yeah.
S: So you study it, then you look at it again in a few hours, then you look at it again in a day, then two days after that, then a week after that. You keep coming back to the material at prolonged intervals and then that really locks it in. I wish I remembered to do that, yeah.
C: And I, I'm going to read the question probably differently than the, but you said there were multiple people who asked about memory. So I think that there's the sort of how we're taking it, which is like, how do I increase my cognitive capacity? Like how do I do memory better? And then a different take on it, which is colored by my experiences with my work is how do I remember the things that matter to me in a more vivid way. And I think that the best practice for that is literally practicing like mindfulness throughout the day. It's being present when things are happening. It's trying to avoid allowing yourself to be distracted and really noticing what's coming in through all your senses, what your body experiences like. Because memory is a multi streamed function. And so if you can tie it to both your visual memory but also your emotional memory, your sense memory, like your smell, your taste, your touch, those memories are going to be more vivid for you as you pull them back later. Yeah.
US#04: Excellent.
B: Another idea. Another idea is to the way you organize information. Like for example, if I, if I come across a really interesting scientific tidbit, a really great explanation of some scientific fact, that's kind of difficult. I take a screenshot and I put it in this special folder and I got a folder filled with that. So I can go back and refresh my memory of these things that I, that I found such a, a ha moment that I want to save them and have access to them. And that's and I but I struggle with that saving and organizing information so that I can quickly get to it. Like the the classic example, I got 30,000 pictures on my phone and and Evan was just doing it. Wait, I want to show you a picture 20 minutes later. I can't find that damn picture. And if AI doesn't help me solve that, I'm going to be really. They will. That's going to happen.
C: But I also think that stopping and taking a picture of the thing actually takes you out of the experience, so it may backfire for you.
E: Well, it depends on the experience but but.
B: Still, though, sometimes there's nothing like having that picture. Yeah.
C: Sure, but if you want to remember a concert, don't videotape with the whole right?
E: Alright, so that's true. Or the eclipse. If you're going to go watch the solar eclipse, don't worry about the.
US#04: Pictures just should just experience.
E: Absolutely.
US#04: Did I ever talk about my S memory idea? No. S memory. S memory.
C: Love it. I already love it did.
US#04: We talk about, I think you talked about.
S: It with me, I don't know if you get it.
US#04: On OK, yeah, it's just like the idea that, you know, sometimes you open up a closet at your parents house and it's like, oh, ski trip because it just instantly hits you with that smell or whatever that is with a Christmas ornaments, whatever. And you're just like, Oh my God, the memory comes flooding into your brain. I want to have a product that are all these different odors, right? And it's called the can of Smemory. And you have and you go to a concert or you go to the eclipse and you pop open a can and you associate that with the event that's happening, right? And then in the future way down the road, you buy another can of like S memory 11B. And you pop it open and like, would it trigger the same memory of the thing? I don't know if it would work, but I think it's a it's a potential product.
J: I think it would work because you know, we know that those two, you know, the sense of smell and kind in an.
US#04: Interesting way, but how many times that have to happen?
S: Yeah, before it really gets in. Training, that's the that's the question, right?
US#04: Yeah. Is it a flash ball memory or how? Pungent. Does it have to? How nasty does it have to sort of be to like, you know, like memory?
C: Or like, yes, your grandma's house you've been to like 500 times versus one concert one time. Right. Yeah.
US#04: There's two more if we have time. I think these are really fun. Have two of you ever been in an argument and not been talking to each other and had to record a show?
S: We had to record a show, no?
C: Well, we had a show where Bob left.
US#04: Yeah, Bob, Rage quit.
C: He rage quit in the middle of an episode was.
J: That in the middle of the episode or at the beginning, Bob was pissed at me and. You'll love it. Basically we were arguing about something and I, I hate to bring it up again, but I called Bob Trump.
C: He was like, alright.
J: Trump said F you and he he just turned off his mic and this was.
C: The last time.
J: Because I was definitely trying to say something to piss him off.
B: That's crossing the lines.
J: But we don't.
C: Did he come back?
J: Still cracks, Yeah, yeah. Bob, Steve and I don't break back as brothers.
B: We don't do as a.
C: Talk some negotiation.
J: We just don't it.
B: Just goes away immediately.
J: Bob had to go walk it off. We can get Steve and I can get into a super heated, semi pissed off discussion.
E: No, we know.
C: We know, We all know.
J: But I'm there. Yeah, I've been super angry, but like, the love I have for Steve and Bob outweighs, amazingly outweighs any anger that could possibly come up.
C: And it hasn't happened much, I feel like lately. There was definitely a time when we were in the studio that was not comfortable for us. Yeah, I don't remember. It was a while back.
E: But Carrie and I are testing each other. Cara this is.
C: Weird brothers, am I right all?
S: Right now, Evan, Yeah. How is Goop doing?
E: Well, if you've read any headlines recently, you may have come across one that reads well. What I read the other day is Goop nearing its end and I was like. Yeah. I had to read that. What is Goop? In case anyone in our audience does not know, they are a Wellness and lifestyle brand company. This is their official thing. Founded by Gwyneth Paltrow, American Actress launched in September 2008 as a weekly e-mail newsletter providing New Age advice such as Police Your Thoughts and Eliminate White foods and the slogan Nourish the inner aspect. OK, fine. They expanded into an e-commerce collaborating with fashion brands, launching pop up shops, Wellness summits, print magazine, podcast, docu series for Netflix which maybe some of us care. I know you watched that one. Didn't you? Did you watch which one? The The Goop Netflix. Docu series.
C: No, I don't think. I do.
E: You didn't. OK, I thought you had.
C: Is it is it a goop series or is it a series taking down goop?
E: It's, it's a combination. So it's kind of a, it's a hybrid, right?
J: It's a hybrid.
E: I call Gwyneth. I've told her, called her in the past, the Queen of Quackery, the Duchess of Dubiousness, and the Matriarch of Malarkey. And I think that holds true. Among the things, in case you don't know, that Goop promotes, sells their products, the people that they endorse. Well, we'll go through a couple of them just so you can kind of get some background, and we'll get into the actual news for the week. They have perfumes and candles that will treat anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD. They have an author who writes for them who is a chiropractor who does energy exorcisms in people. Yeah, so chiropractor and exorcism 2 of my least favorite things. They have articles about underwire bras. Causing what?
C: Cancer.
E: Yeah, which is very.
C: Not a thing.
E: It's actually a pre group goop idea, but they kind of just use their celebrity to elevate that idea.
S: My favorite is the jade vagina.
E: Oh yeah, I'm getting to that. I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming. I.
S: Didn't miss that one.
E: Biofrequency stickers, remember? Yeah, using electronic energetic frequency to address imbalances. That's not vague in any way. Earthing, how walking barefoot could cure your insomnia and more. Oh, negative words can change the structure of water, according to according to the experts at Goud. God, a guru who don't know what his name is, but in oh spirit, his name is a spirit using wisdom passed on to him from a divine, from a divine voice. So they basically a what a channeler. They have a channeler apparently that they use as well, but they also make some specific more, you know, instead of these kinds of things, they, they talk about vitamins, among other things. And they actually promote their own brands and they'll sell you vitamins with, oh, you know, things like, well, this particular one had biotin in it, but 8300 times the daily recommended allowance of biotin, among other things. This is common among supplements. They have all kinds of elevated levels of this stuff. But now, yeah, of course, they're they're I think Steve brought it up. Their most well known or the most some of the most pressed they've got were things having to do with vaginal eggs, which will according to them, enhance your orgasm and improve bladder control. They say nothing about the risk of a bacterial infection increase and also what the V steam the vaginal steam also to balance your hormones, but they also don't tell you that it will also burn your skin down there and also is a risk for bacterial infections. For these last two things, you know they suffered, they were they were taken to court by a bunch of district attorneys from around the country and they had to settle court case $145,000 in fines that they that they had to pay into. Prices doing business. Right. It's just, it's, it's basically, you know, like a rounding error for them. But there have also been some other cases in which they've run afoul with legal issues. It's hard to do that.
S: It's so permissive.
E: Yeah.
S: You know, running up a mutual law for practicing pseudoscience. I mean, that you have to be really bad. Yeah. Egregious. Yeah.
E: Just this year 24/20/24 and This is why the article is saying like is this the end? Is this the end of the Goop of Goop? Earlier in the year they were had a new lawsuit brought against them by a company called Good Clean Love, which is a trademark brand. But Goop went ahead and introduced something called Good Clean Goop and so good clean love for, for what you know, for whatever their flag in the sand is. They took their take. They took them to court this year and they for many months that was pursued and they only recently settled this case. Although this this particular news report, I said, said the case is still ongoing, but Bloomberg reported that the case just settled a couple a couple of weeks ago, undisclosed amount. However, from the time that the lawsuit took place between between now and then, they've had two rounds of layoffs at Goop. They had they that their peak, they had 216 employees at this company. They cut 18% of their workforce in August of this past year. And now just recently, a couple weeks ago, they laid off another 6% of their workforce on top of that. So they are. They are cutting, cutting, cutting for.
C: I don't think it's just going to bounce right back with RFK in office or not in office doing whatever the talk he's going to be doing.
E: I don't know, let me read. Let me read you a couple of paragraphs from the article because I think this is kind of the crux of the thing. One of the companies challenges has been its excessive diversification. Until now Group has been a newsletter, podcast and beauty line products. They also talk about the Netflix shows, their stores Goop Kitchen and a which is a take out chain in Southern California and they launched a Wellness conference in luxury cruise. But these staff cuts that are occurring have been targeted to prioritize the emphasis maintaining what's left of goop in three areas, beauty, fashion and food. They're primarily, they're primarily abandoning initiatives based on Wellness. That's not insignificant. I don't think it's going to be the end of goop in, in my opinion. These things, these things rarely die out. However, for whatever these, the external pressures are, the market essentially this is hopefully changing and I hope it's driven by the consumer behavior is that fewer people are buying into this crap and for and and as a result, they're taking a look finally kind of making some hard financial decisions over at Goop and deciding, yeah, we got to cut it. Basically, what's not working, what's not selling, and it's all the garbage stuff that we've been taking them to task for for many years.
C: I'm not hopeful about that. I think it just ebbs and flows. I think this is just a trend. They're going to go with the trends, but I don't know, I'm really not hopeful that sort of the Wellness industry is doing pretty well. I don't think goop is a metric for the entire industry, do you it?
J: Could be bad management, you never know.
C: Yeah, and I think it's just going to get worse. I'm really nervous about this next administration.
J: It's.
C: Going to be rampant.
J: One idiot after the next. I mean it. The pseudoscience is going to be in the front.
C: Glorified. Yeah. And celebrated in a way that I don't think this in this country ever has been like sanctioned in that way. Maybe there was a historical era when snake oil was like government officials were promoting snake oil.
E: And again, it never fully goes away. The pseudoscience will always will always be there and there will be the next Goop or whatever it is that that ultimately comes out. However, Goop and Gwyneth Paltrow do get a lot of publicity, probably more than other companies out there that are doing because they don't have the celebrity name behind them or, or whatever reason. And to see this specifically though that that they're going to do what they have to do with the basically make a corporate decision here. And as a result of that, they'll, they'll phase out a lot of the crap that they've been doing.
S: Are they just being out competed by other?
E: And there are more, yeah. So certainly there are more players in the market, in the marketplace, in the marketplace as well. And I'm sure that has an impact on them. But they're going to continue their beauty, fashion and food items.
S: But it is a good thing that you know such an upfront brand is going to be moving away from that. Yeah.
E: Yeah, whatever.
S: But I agree with Kara. I'm not terribly optimistic.
Food Distribution (1:22:41)[edit]
- https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/08/food-supply-chain-networks-why-sustainable-practices-fail-and-approaches-to-improve-them/ [5]
S: All right, Jay, you're going to finish this off by talking about food distribution around the world.
J: Yes, I have a question for everyone, so just name some things you had for breakfast today.
E: Eggs parfait.
C: Coffee.
J: Pizza, Donuts. Somebody had Donuts for breakfast. That's pretty awesome. So I, I find this fascinating. The, the, the global food trade industry is bigger, much bigger than I originally thought. And to give you an idea, I'll read, you know, a list of food items that people would have for breakfast in the US and where they came from. So oatmeal from Ireland, a banana from Costa Rica, sugar from Brazil, coffee made from beans grown in Ethiopia, Colombia, Sumatra and Honduras. And if you fed your dog, they likely had kibble that was made from seaweed that came from China and fish oil that came from Peru. Yeah, a lot of these items could come from the US But the fact is a lot of them, you know, come from outside of the US and from most countries. A lot of the food items come from outside that country as well. So about 25% of all food crosses international borders, 25%.
C: Of all food globally.
J: Pretty much globally, I mean, you know, we this article and my resources didn't dig into like specific nations, you know, just in general like.
C: You're not saying like in America, 25% of our food comes from international sources like you're saying around the world 25.
J: That's pretty, I think it's pretty, pretty universal that 1/4 of the food supply is coming from somewhere else. And there's they're, they're speculating that by 2050 half the world's population could depend on calories that were are produced outside, right. So what is the scale of the global food trade? So first of all, it's it's a huge system. It's worth about $2 trillion that were measured in 2023, which quadrupled since the year 2000. So it's trending in that direction in a strong way to to increase. Nine countries export 80% of the world's wheat, corn, rice and soybeans. 134 countries rely on these 9 exporters for more than half of their imports for the staple crops. China consumes 70% of the world's soybean exports.
E: What's that for soy sauce?
J: I thought soy sauce right for animal. Feeds everything. I'm like, Oh yeah, the soy sauce. No, it's animal feed. I thought that that was pretty funny.
S: That's a lot. 70% of the world's soy was going to soy sauce. That would be. That would be something.
J: Yeah, but there's a lot. Of those bottles are so tiny. Small go to Costco, man. I have like a gallon one. It's awesome. All right, So the US exports about 25% of the food traded globally, which is much of that's coming from California, Oregon, Washington and Texas. So keep in mind like when I say that, just remember that like most of that food is coming from, you know, those four states. What are the benefits of the global food trade? So there are some very strong standouts here, like Peru, for example, that's where most quinoa exports are not they make up 40% of the global market comes from Peru, right, just for quinoa. And what happened was when this, when, when, you know, sales started to go up, right? Because quinoa hasn't been around forever. The farmers in the Andes, they, they turn this traditional crop literally into a lifeline for them. And it it, it, IT services a lot of people now economically.
US#04: Is that is that traditionally Peruvian quinoa? Is that is that like where it's from?
J: From what I understand like that's where it is from like they they might be growing it in other.
US#04: Places a gun in my head. I would have never been able to say where where quinoa is from. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah.
J: So the global trade that's happening right now diversifies global diets. It brings foods like bananas and pineapples and red chilies to countries worldwide. Costa Rica produces half the world's pineapples. India accounts for 40% of the global dried red chili production.
S: It's an interesting question of like, is this a good thing or a bad? Thing.
J: Well, let me get to that because I'll tell you. All right, I'll tell you.
C: He's got the answer.
J: It's it's both at the same time.
US#04: Maybe it's. Complicated.
J: Maybe it's both. So here are some benefits and and costs here. So Brazil has they've cleared huge areas of the Amazon rainforest. Not good, right, To make beef and soybean production. It's that that scares me. And we've talked about this on the show many times. You know, there's a lot of unfound medicines that could be pulled out of the Amazon forest, right? Costa Rica uses more pesticides per hectare than any other country to meet the global pineapple demand. Now, I know Evan probably doesn't care about the that he just wants his pineapples.
E: Yes. Never, never ever thought about where my pineapples come from. But my favorite fruit? Pineapple.
J: Yeah, Pineapple's magical. But the point is, you know, in order to meet the demand, like things have to change, you know, the farmland has to either be optimized or they need more farmland. Spain's Marde Plastico generates 30,000 tons of plastic waste annually. You know, that's horrifying. We have to think about these things. We have to think about the fact that we're, we're going to, you know, as the population increases, it's not just increasing, you know, in, in a linear fashion, it's, it's exponential. Like, you know, we have 88 billion people today, right? And that that number is going to rise much faster now the world population, because we have more people. And there are vulnerabilities also in the global food system. And this is kind of scary. And I'll give you some real world examples here. So their disruptions can come from literally anything, right? So a war, a drought, COVID, and even that ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal, Now that was bad.
S: That Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
J: That's the first on my list.
S: Massively disrupted their wheat exports. Yeah, the war disrupted trees.
J: 30 to 40% of global wheat exports. But you know, think you know Ukraine. They said it was the bread basket, you know, of Europe, right? It's that is not an exaggeration. You know that, you know, you, you have 30 or 40% of the global wheat exports that are coming from 1 country and that country goes to freaking war. I can't bake bread anymore and I won't have that. You know, I mean, all joking aside, though, that's scary because people depend on that. Like in the United States, I feel like, yeah, if we went away, we'd probably be OK. There's lots of.
S: Inconvenience, but we wouldn't starve to death. But there are people around the world who will starve to death.
J: Absolutely.
S: If that kind of disruption happens.
J: So the global food production is, is highly concentrated in a few regions, obviously because of, you know, how arid the land is and all that. I use that word correct, arable. I always screw those two up. OK, arable, sorry. At least I remember to remember to do it. California produces 80% of the celery in the US and is a major global supplier. So when a, when a drought hits California, you know, celery can go down. And there's, there is massive future challenges here because global demand, like I said, is rising and the climate change is having a huge impact on the, you know, the, the land that's being, that's producing right now. And it's going to shift right? Literally probably in our lifetime. We're going to see some major changes in where they're growing food because like this can't grow in here anymore. But hey, this is working over here now. So, and that's not going to be easy because what if there's housing there and we need that land to grow staple food? The bottom line here is that we need to, to build some global infrastructure. I don't, I'm not so sure how much countries would work together on this. I mean, being that it's a $2 trillion industry, there probably is a lot of, you know, people are motivated to do it, but they're saying things like we have to build ports that can handle massive grain storage, storage to keep, you know, if we could have like, you know, like we have in the United States, we have a backup of gasoline, right, In case something happens. We, we needed backups of food in case a pandemic happens or, or a war breaks out and that type of thing. Just interesting to think though. I mean, I had no idea that when I'm eating oatmeal that a a huge percentage of it could just be coming from Ireland.
S: But I think you didn't really talk a lot about the good aspects of it and also think a lot of the negative aspects are a little overblown in that they're they're sort of not really related to the fact that we're exporting food is just that we're producing a lot of food, like using a lot of pesticides, whatever. That's more of a farming issue. Not really an exporting issue if you do an analysis of efficiency in the system, right, which is very critical. We're at a point where like how efficient our big worldwide systems are makes a huge difference. Growing the the food that is optimal for the land it's grown on is way more important than how far you have to ship it to the person who's going to eat it. Right. The whole local VOR thing is kind of pseudoscience. It doesn't really matter how far your food has to travel as long as the food was grown in the most efficient way. So, for example, you're far better off buying potatoes from Idaho shipped to Connecticut than trying to grow potatoes in Connecticut because the soil is not ideal for it. You get the efficiency of that is way better. That's what the good thing about this worldwide food web is. There's a reason we're growing so much food in these locations, because that's the best place to grow that. Yeah, of course it's adapted to it. If the soil is the best for it, the system's the best for it, whatever, and we're better off just doing that and shipping it.
C: Around I think, but aren't you then also better off eating seasonal food that does grow in your area?
S: Yeah, you could do that too. I mean, so you I.
C: Mean like you have to have that one fruit from that one country.
S: So it is, yeah. Yeah. So I do think that there's a balance here where you want to eat seasonally as good. You know, we always shop at all the local farms, you know, when when their stuff is growing, that's great too. But having a varied diet is hugely important for nutrition. And, you know, especially globally, again, we're kind of privileged because we, we have a, you know, incredible diet. But in terms of availability of different kinds of foods in other parts of the country of the world, it's not as much. But the availability of a very diet is massively important to human health.
C: Yeah, but like at a certain point it's successful, right?
S: Yeah, it's all about balance.
J: Yeah, but. There are people that like 90% of what they eat are plantains, you know, like they totally nutritionally that you know, you could live off of potatoes, but that would not be health a healthy thing to do, but.
S: Potatoes are kind of a staple food then, and you know what I mean? So that is not just like a luxury food, like a pineapple where it's, you know, it is something that people are living off of and growing that in the most efficient way is important. So, and I don't think we should like try to, you know, discourage or downgrade the sort of global food market because we all want to like eat only food that's grown locally. I think that's kind of a a myth. You're better off letting these systems evolve the way they should evolve, like growing it most efficiently. Also, if you talk about distribution, having centralized distribution is also more, you know, efficient than having like every farm distributed themselves. So again, like those sort of local network. There's a reason why we have the systems that we have now because it is efficient. What we do need to do, in my opinion, is make sure that we are using each piece of land for its optimal use. That's the factor that seems to be the most important in terms of agricultural efficiency and that we continue to advance our technology like GMO's so that you know we are optimizing the whole agricultural industry and that will do things like reduce pesticide use and and increase yield and etcetera.
US#04: Do you all think that seasonality or the availability of certain items only certain times of the year enhances the enjoyment of those items?
C: Absolutely.
US#04: Sure, to some extent I.
S: Don't know about.
C: That I think so.
US#04: I wonder because like, OK, you only have eggnog at Christmas. Like if you're going to have it, you only have it at Christmas. If you like it, you can get it year round. But like, I would never have eggnog.
J: 4th of July. But that's very different than eating a really nice apple, which is a healthy thing, you know, right?
US#04: Sure, eggnog's bad for. You, but I'm sure yeah, that was just a seasonal example that popped in my head. But like, not having some access to something, yeah, increases the enjoyment of it when you have it.
C: Constantly having access to every available option is not good for you psychologically.
S: OK, it's not. But even the system that we have now, like. It's 100% it's. Trying to have both because like there are still seasonal fruits and vegetables that we get. Like there's this one, two to three-week period a year where you get the really good Peaches, you know what I mean? Like every the rest of the year you get crappy Peaches. They're still Peaches. They're fine.
E: Corn is the same.
S: Right. Or like this. Yeah, local sweet corn When it's when that's right, it's just better. It's just better than the stuff that is shipped.
E: Around corn in August. Is the best SO.
S: You know, the, there's a certain time of year when the Honey Crisp apples are great. You know, you're getting the local stuff. The rest of the year you can get them, but they're like just OK, you know, they're not the stuff that is ripe off the tree. So you still get that limited window right for the quality, for really high quality good produce.
US#04: I love it, I think. I think it's so cool to I look. Forward like it's Peach season. Yeah, it's pumpkin. Season. It's like for the pumpkin soup and whatever, whatever.
J: The only thing I look forward to? I love chestnuts, Yeah. And literally there's like a three-week window where they're available. Yeah. And I and I celebrate.
US#04: So do you think you would enjoy them as much if you had them year round?
J: I would. Enjoy them more because I'd eat them more, right? You understand what I'm saying? Like they're saying no, they're saying no.
C: But there's a fundamental difference on this panel about like this very existential dialectic, like I believe that the only reason life matters the way it does is because we die. And they don't think that. So it's it's a more philosophical argument.
Goop Spiral (1:35:56)[edit]
S: What I think?
C: I know.
S: I think it's time for science or fiction.
US#07: I was. Just getting good.
E: It's time for science or fiction.
S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts. 2 real and one fictitious. Then I will challenge my panel of skeptics and the live audience to tell me which one that you all think is the fake now in honor of December 7th, which is Pearl Harbor day.
US#03: Oh yeah.
S: The theme for this science or fiction is winter. There's nothing it's not winter. It's.
C: Going to say between when is winter?
S: It's this 21st will be coming out in winter.
E: OK, an honor. That's kind of like. With the Journal with the January 2025 OK.
S: So we'll be, we'll be going, we'll be going live in the end of December, so. We will, OK. OK, Evan, all right.
E: Yeah, you pulled that on the fire, Steve. Good job.
S: I know who's going first on all right item number one. Lightning is just as common during snowstorms as rainstorms, but it's harder to see and hear due to the dense snow. Item number two. Although rare, snow has fallen in recent times near sea level in the Sahara Desert and the Atacama Desert. And three, Aomori City in Japan is the snowiest city in the world, with an average annual snowfall of about 26 feet.
US#04: That's a lot of snow.
S: OK, Evan, why don't you go first?
E: Number one about lightning being just as common during snowstorms as rain storms. Harder to see and hear due to the dense snow. No doubt about it that I've witnessed many times in lightning during snowstorms when you're in New England. I think we've all had that experience.
B: I haven't.
E: Is it as, is it as common though? That's the question here. Is it only because it's harder to see and hear due due to the dense snow? I've never really thought about that. If I knew more about lightning and its properties, perhaps I would be able to better determine if there if it has an impact during regardless of the precipitation or the temperature or, or the OR, you know, or, or that temperature difference. The second one about the snow in the Sahara Desert and the Atacama Desert. I'm sorry, where's the Atacama Desert?
S: So the Sahara desert is Sahara desert in northern. Africa.
E: I know where that is.
S: The tropical zone above the equator, The Atacama Desert, is in the Southern Hemisphere below the equator, about as far below the equator as the Sahara Desert is above the equator.
E: I have a feeling that one's science. The last one about Japan being the snowiest city in the world, 26 feet. Yeah. You don't, I don't know that you really think of Japan as a place where, you know, where you snow, You think snow, you think Siberia, you think Canada, you know, you think maybe Norway. You don't really think of Japan as being that. But it could be, you know, this could be, oh, this is a city. It's not really a mountain peak. You have a mountain. You have a city and a mountain peak. I'd be that would be, that would be kind of unusual. Boy, I've never heard. It's either this one or the first one. I will say the city in Japan is not the snowiest in the world. That one is fiction.
S: OK, Kara.
C: No, I don't. I grew up in Texas and I live in Lai should go last. I have no idea. Snowstorms and lightning. I've I've been in like 1 snowstorm in my life. So I yeah, I have no idea what what I chose wisely.
S: Yeah, 1. You should move to Aomori.
C: No. So the Atacama Desert is the driest place in the world, right? So it has the least precipitation of anywhere else in the world, measurably so that's interesting that it would also have snow, which is a form of precipitation. So although rare though, like that's, he caveats all of these all the time. It has fallen in recent times near sea level. Does that mean it's stuck? Not necessarily. So could have fallen and then immediately evaporated. And then the city in Japan, it's a snowy city. I mean, I definitely feel like there's imagery in my mind of a lot of snow in Japan. And I do think that it's quite mountainous. And obviously anywhere, you know, I live in LA, but you can go to the mountains and that's where all the snow is, right? It's at elevation. So if it's a city at elevation, maybe. So I don't know. That one doesn't bother me as much. But that's the one you picked, right? Like maybe it's a city, like somewhere on Mount Fiji or something. I don't know. So I don't know that that one could be science. I don't know. Did did snow fall in the Atacama? Did snow fall in the Sahara? It just has to have happened once, and that would be science. So maybe it's the lightning one. That's the one I know the least about. So I'll say the Lightning one is fiction.
J: OK, Jay. I'm gonna just just get right to it. I think that the one about lightning in the snowstorm and it's supposed to be as much as rain versus snow. I, I think that one is fiction because largely anecdotal, but you know, I'm getting up in years and I've been experienced both snow and rain a lot in my life. Like I have never ever seen or heard lightning during a snowstorm. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I mean, statistically, you know, when it's, when it's a thunderstorm and lightning is happening and all that, like it is super prevalent. It's not like, oh, I kind of hear it. Like you could hear it from 20 miles away. You know what I mean? So that one has got to be fiction. There's just no way that lightning is like landing a half a mile for me and I'm not hearing it done. Hey, Bob.
B: Yeah, it's hard to disagree. I was thinking the same thing as Cara, though, the snow in the desert. Yeah, you say it's falling, but I don't think it landed. I could see potentially you'd have some, you know, upper atmosphere chill that can create the snow, but it's not getting on the ground or lasting for long. I kind of see that city in Japan. Yeah, I could see in the mountainous region. I would have thought I would have heard of it is the snowiest place. It's a lot of snow, but the lightning one, I totally agree. Not only have I never remember experiencing, hearing or anything, I've never even seen pictures of lightning in a snowstorm. You'd think there'd be one picture out there that would be something that you'd recognize. So yeah, I'll say that one and that Steve's going to screw us on this. Really. OK.
US#04: And George? I would answer this, but I don't think this is either the time or the place. How about now all? Right. OK, now so I actually I've I've heard lightning in AI mean from my recollection as a child, all the ski trips I used to take, I remember hearing lightning during a snowstorm being like, wow, this is amazing. The question is just as common, which is such a Steve thing to throw in there.
C: You heard, I know for.
US#04: Sure, it has snowed in the Sahara.
C: Right.
US#04: What's that?
C: You heard? Thunder.
US#04: Oh, sorry. Yes, sorry. I mean both, like, yeah, no, I remember like, like.
C: Saw the light.
US#04: Sorry, sorry. Sahara, there has been snow. I don't know the other the the Atacama, it's I don't know about that. And Japan, 26 feet of snow seems excessive. So I am going to say the Japanese, the Japanese snow.
S: One, All right, so you guys are split between 1:00 and 3:00. We're going to pull the audience if you think that the lightning and snowstorms is the fiction clap, if you think that snow in the Sahara and Atacama is the fiction clap, and if you think that the Amori city is the fiction clap.
US#04: OK, so definitely step towards the first one.
S: Very few of you think that the second one is fiction, so we'll start there. Although rare, snow has fallen in recent times near sea level. Near sea level. That's interesting. I threw that in there in the Sahara Desert and the Atacama Desert. The entire panel thinks this one is science. Most of the audience thinks this.
US#04: One is science. Wait, wait, wait, is Atacama like a pun? Like it's, it's like it's not a real thing. No, it's a real thing. It's a real OK. It is the driest. Place.
S: Atacama is the driest place on earth.
US#04: Gotcha. OK. Is it? Desert. I just, I just heard that pun. Like if that's a pun, I'm going to hand this microphone at your face.
S: I've heard is also desert. Yes, this one is science. This is good. And yes, it's on the ground. Like you could see pictures of snow on the sand dunes of this air.
US#04: I see it.
S: Yeah, it's it's amazing. It's. And the Atacama recently had you know that that's the more surprising one because it is not just arid. It's also not just hot. It's not just tropical. It's very dry. But they had an Arctic weather pattern that you. Know. Cold air up there and they had snow in the Atacama Desert which is amazing. Not Arctic.
J: Like the lizards, they they snowboard you.
S: Know yeah they did the lizards yeah, in Jay's mind they. Snowboard. I tried to find if snow has ever fallen on the equator at sea level.
J: I would say yeah at some.
S: Point no, never never that not not in recent time. Obviously you can go back to different climates, but I couldn't find any actual reports and every reference I found said no, not at sea level. The there's a snow line you can know at the snow line, of course, and that of course gets higher the closer you get to the equator. There are mountains on the equator like Kilimanjaro where there is snow, but you have to get really high up in the mountains on the equator. But this is the farthest Equatorial places I could find where snow at sea level was documented in these two deserts. OK, I guess we'll go back to #1 Lightning is just as common during snowstorms as rainstorms, but it's harder to see and hear due to the dense snow. Cara J and Bob think this one is the fiction, along with most of the audience thinks this one is the fiction. Now, there are a couple of details in here. So, George, you keyed in on one. So is it just as common as snowstorms? Does it happen at all? Right. Have you guys ever heard of snow Thunder? No, the terms heard Thunder people have heard the. Terms heard it many times. I'm surprised you guys have never.
US#04: Experienced this you?
S: Made it snow. No, nobody snows.
US#04: It's like, it's like cocaine. Yeah, I know of that.
S: So snow Thunder happens. Yeah, it is also true that the presence of the snow. Dampens. Dampens the sand. So like Jay, you actually kind of, you said something very interesting. You said you could hear the light.
J: This is my face. Excuse me? 20 miles away. Yeah, right. So how much then?
S: Why would you use that to conclude that you would hear it if we're a half a mile away? The point is, the distance at which you can see and hear a lightning strike is way shorter during a snowstorm than during a rainstorm. You wouldn't see the 120 miles away, right? That's your experience. Most of the lightning you're seeing is not half a mile away, right during a during a rainstorm. So that is also true, but it is nowhere near as common as rainstorm.
J: This is. That's a. Good one, Steve.
S: Yeah, this is the fiction. Because there has to be certain atmospheric conditions in order for it to happen during a snowstorm. It's not as conducive to generating electrical storms, a lightning storm. But if you have, you have to have warmer air below colder clouds. And there has to be something going on like wind that is forcing that warm air up into the clouds and then that can produce the lightning storm during a snowstorm. But I think the reason we've like grown up with snowstorms our whole life and we've never seen or heard the snow Thunder. Yeah, Evan has. Yeah. I can't remember if I have or not. I don't certainly don't have any clear memory of doing is because they're just really hard to. They're not common and they're very hard to see in here.
E: It's a combination of.
S: Yeah, OK. Which means that a Omori city in Japan is the snowiest city in the world, with an average annual snowfall of about 26 feet. Is Science 20? 626. Feet. How many people? Houses get buried in the snow. Houses get buried. Yes, it's amazing.
C: Where is it? Is it at elevations?
S: In northern Japan. And what's the population like in? This city, it's not in the mountains, no, it's just in northern Japan. It's a city. It's populous enough to be called the city. I don't know.
B: What the number scheme? Well, perhaps. That snow sports are a big deal in Japan, yeah. Can you imagine there's snow removal infrastructure? Must be epic.
S: Yes, no removal, as we know from recent excessive snow in in, in our own part of the country, There's a point beyond which they can't just plow the snow anymore, right? Like you can't just push it to the side.
B: They melt it.
S: Yeah. So there's a couple of things that they do. One is they pull in the backhoes, they pick up the snow and they move it. They have to bring it to like a parking lot. They go, OK, this parking lot's now done for the next two months, and they just dump snow, pile it up into huge piles. There you can melt the snow.
J: It's. Just expensive. The equipment's like $200,000. I saw I saw a guy trying to do it with a flamethrower and the flamethrower did almost nothing. You yeah, you need. That is not that's. What?
US#04: That's what hibachi tables were originally for. Apparently was for melting.
C: Large amounts, 275,000 people in 2020. So it's a big, I mean, it's a big suburb, I guess you could say.
J: I'd like to point out Kara, who knows the least about Snow of probably anybody I know. I still How the hell did you pick the right one first? You are so good at this, it isn't starting to freak me out. I.
S: Know it really took me so long I'm sitting here listening to her saying absolutely no absolutely nothing about any of this and she's like I'll take 1 he.
C: Doesn't know lot going on in there, right?
J: You should make a meme with Kara. You know that guy that's like always like, you know, bring it.
S: All right, Evan, give us a quote.
E: America's leadership must be guided by learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible would gain popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem. John Fitzgerald Kennedy from his speech that he was going to give the day he was assassinated.
S: Yeah, very wise. Yeah, it's very relevant. Just saying. Yeah.
E: Some other.
S: Who I'm talking.
E: About some quotes are timeless.
S: Well, thank you guys for joining me for this special episode.
Live Q&A (1:50:30)[edit]
The Rogues answer several live questions. None
E: As you see.
S: Thank you guys. It's always nice to visit DC again. We had a lovely crowd. Thank you all. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. 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/skeptics Guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.
Science or Fiction (1:50:30)[edit]
Theme: Winter
Item #1: Lightning is just as common during snowstorms as rainstorms, but is harder to see and hear due to the dense snow.[7]
Item #2: Although rare, snow has fallen in recent times near sea level in the Sahara desert and the Atacama desert.[8]
Item #3: Aomori City in Japan is the snowiest city in the world with an average annual snowfall of about 26 feet.[9]
| Answer | Item |
|---|---|
| Fiction | Lightning is just as common during snowstorms as rainstorms, but is harder to see and hear due to the dense snow. |
| Science | Although rare, snow has fallen in recent times near sea level in the Sahara desert and the Atacama desert. |
| Science | Aomori City in Japan is the snowiest city in the world with an average annual snowfall of about 26 feet. |
| Host | Result |
|---|---|
| Steve | sweep |
| Rogue | Guess |
|---|
E: As you see.
S: Thank you guys. It's always nice to visit DC again. We had a lovely crowd. Thank you all. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. 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/skeptics Guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.
S: It's always nice to visit DC again. We had a lovely crowd. Thank you all. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. 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/skeptics Guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:50:30)[edit]
America's leadership must be guided by learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain popular ascendancy, with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.
– John Fitzgerald Kennedy, (description of author)
E: As you see.
S: Thank you guys. It's always nice to visit DC again. We had a lovely crowd. Thank you all. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. 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/skeptics Guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible. It's always nice to visit DC again. We had a lovely crowd. Thank you all. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. 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/skeptics Guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.
S: We had a lovely crowd. Thank you all. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
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- ↑ www.sciencealert.com: Experiment Reveals How Pressure to Tip Can Unexpectedly Backfire : ScienceAlert
- ↑ www.cnn.com: JonBenet Ramsey: What we know about the child beauty queen’s death, the botched investigation and decades of mystery
- ↑ theness.com: Finding Small Primordial Black Holes - NeuroLogica Blog
- ↑ phys.org: Oldest known alphabet unearthed in ancient Syrian city
- ↑ www.weforum.org: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/08/food-supply-chain-networks-why-sustainable-practices-fail-and-approaches-to-improve-them/
- ↑ english.elpais.com: Is Gwyneth Paltrow’s business empire nearing its end? Goop ends 2024 with lawsuits and layoffs
- ↑ northernwoodlands.org: Thundersnow: A Rare Type of Winter Storm
- ↑ earthobservatory.nasa.gov: On This Day in 2011: Snow in the Atacama Desert
- ↑ www.statista.com: Japan: annual snowfall Aomori 2024