SGU Episode 1017

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SGU Episode 1017
January 04th 2025
"Viewing Earth from space: a breathtaking reminder of our planet's beauty and fragility."
SGU 1016                      SGU 1018
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
“Hope & curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. The unknown was always so attractive to me...and still is.”
- Hedy Lamarr
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Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, January 2^nd, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella...

B: Hey, everybody!

S: Cara Santa Maria...

C: Howdy.

S: Jay Novella...

J: Hey guys.

S: ...and Evan Bernstein.

E: Alive and thrive in 25.

S: Yeah, 2025. Always interesting to start a new year. I get to delete all of last year's files and start with a fresh folder.

C: How many times are we going to write the date wrong?

S: I know.

E: I already got it.

S: I've already done it.

E: Once, yes. I did my one and I swore aloud, I admit it. Steve, you like even number years and not odd number years? Is that right?

C: Yeah, but 25 is really bad, right?

S: But 25 is okay. 25 is the best of the odd number years because it's divisible into 10.

E: I got it. I got it. That's your numerology.

B: I agree with that.

S: It's all about symmetry.

C: That's a quarter of a century.

S: Quarter of a century.

E: No.

C: Oh, my God.

S: We're coming to the end of the first quarter. We're heading into the second quarter of the 21st century.

C: Year 2000 was a quarter century. What? What?

S: I know.

E: So much happened and so much didn't happen.

C: True.

E: It's a very true statement.

S: And all along the way, the psychics were basically wrong about it.

B: Shocker.

E: Here's my shocked face. Yeah.

Psychic Predictions 2024 (1:32)

S: So we're going to start off as we always do with our first episode of the year by poking a little fun at psychics, looking back at some of the predictions they made for 2024 to see how accurate or inaccurate they were. And then we're going to pit ourselves against the professionals to see how well we do with our own predictions. Does anybody want to start?

B: I guess I'll start it. No one else is chiming in.

E: Go for it.

B: All right. I found a few. A couple of a few different people. I didn't focus on one because I just didn't feel like it. Sonia Chokette. And she's, of course, a well-known intuitive guide. And this is an example of people that just fluff it out. They just throw out the absolute fluff that infuriates me. So she said she anticipated a widespread awakening in 2024 when more individuals will embrace their intuition and soul's purpose. This shift will lead to a spread of authenticity, compassion and creativity. That kind of stuff. It just screams. You can't predict crap. And they just throw that out there. And every year it just pisses me off more. Oh, here's a good one. I don't know if you had this one, Steve, but Baba Vanga, I'll throw one out from her. She predicted the climate would worsen. And then I think she also threw out, it's going to be the warmest year on record. Wow. Really going out on a limb there. It's just like, come on.

C: She keeps stealing mine. Come on.

B: And then there's a psychic Nikki. I don't remember her last name, but I don't care that much. She envisioned, get this, she envisioned a dynamic U.S. presidential election. Really, it's going to be dynamic. Passionate debates and lively public engagement.

J: Well, I never would have thought of that.

B: Yeah. And then how about this one?

E: As opposed to it happening in a closet, right?

B: She predicted the progression of climate change. Oh man, I expected it to stop and reverse last year. And then an increasing importance on environmental awareness and adaption. And it's like, oh, here's a good one. Significant developments in artificial intelligence. You can maybe argue against that, but it's like, okay. And then she throws one out from left field. She's like, oh, also there's a possibility of peaceful extraterrestrial contact. Okay.

C: Okay.

B: All right. Okay. There you go. I'm done with this.

S: Well, since you mentioned Baba Vanga, I just stuck with her. So for those of you who don't know, she's the blind psychic. She actually died in 1996. But like Nostradamus, people keep following her predictions. She made predictions apparently out to the year 5076 or something, which is when, of course, the world ends, because that's when her prediction ends.

E: I wonder what episode we'll be on by then.

S: But she is the master of the vague prediction. Bob already mentioned one, like there will be climate crisis in the future. Like, okay. That wasn't hard. But this is like, she's saying this in the time of the first real period of time when the climate crisis was being discussed. This is the unfortunate truth period. She said there will be- Similarly, there will be economic crisis in 2024. Okay. Like, what does that mean? That can't be- It's almost an unfalsifiable thing. She gets- All right. She gets a little specific. And when she does, she gets completely wrong, right? So she says a major country will engage in biological warfare and testing in 2024. Nope. There were no biological weapon attacks in 2024. Another vague one. There will be breakthroughs in diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's, you know. Like there is every year. You mean-

E: Right.

S: Again, just like vague. Breakthrough in cancer. Like, you know.

E: Define breakthrough.

B: The sun will rise.

S: And she said, oh, and aliens will land. And it'll be during-

E: By the way.

S: During a sporting event. Like, she had to throw that in there.

E: When isn't there a sporting event?

S: I mean, I think like on the midfield at the Super Bowl or something.

E: Oh, I see. Right. The halftime show. Got it. Got it.

S: Whatever. I'll take any unequivocal aliens landing like we are here.

B: Yeah.

S: No, but that didn't happen in 2024 either. Yeah. A complete fail.

E: Psychics failing me.

S: Except for like the most vague predictions.

C: Yeah. We saw something really similar with good old Nostradamus.

E: Did we?

C: Yeah. I think like one, one of his predictions came to fruition, which was the dry earth will grow more parched and there will be great floods when it is seen. So this is like his climate change prediction.

B: Oh, nailed it.

C: Nailed it.

E: Wow.

C: But like most of them were pretty, also pretty specific and definitely did not happen. Like a King of the Isles will be driven out by force, which a lot of people thought that meant that like Charles was going to abdicate, but that didn't happen. There's also through the death of a very old pontiff, a Roman of good age will be elected of him. It will be said that he weakens his sea, but long will he sit in biting activity. Well, the Pope's still there. So-

E: From the Omen or something.

C: No, that's just how Nostradamus talked.

E: I remember that from a movie.

C: Also something about European powers clashing with England and new foes being spawned.

E: I say.

S: Anyone else?

E: You want mine?

S: Yeah.

E: I found a person. Her name is Kelly Sutliff, a psychic medium, author and guest radio host. She conducts readings for clients worldwide and she predicts the upcoming year's events with much accuracy every year. That's right from her website. Sutliff also uses her gifts with much accuracy every year. Who wrote that? Sutliff also uses her gifts to help find the missing. It's just as the missing, like children, animals, whatever. The missing. Okay. Here are some predictions. Oh, some medical predictions. We love these. An MS breakthrough on its connection to mold injuries and why the disease is caused. That's interesting.

S: Mold injuries? No.

E: No. But that's an interesting prediction at least. That's not the usual pap.

C: Steve's like, no.

E: Does mold? Okay. Here's another one. New innovative healing and medical research and cures around why inflammation causes disease in cancer. She wrote this. Disease in inflammatory diseases, myocarditis and melanoma.

S: Okay. She was just looking up medical terms.

E: Isn't that what that seems like? All of this rapid succession of disease due to vaccine injury and why cells are going haywire will help heal those people with these issues. It's like a world cure comes in. That's a prediction. I don't think that happened.

S: That doesn't seem to align with reality in any way.

E: But Steve, she talks about water therapies and electromagnetic therapy and oxygen therapies and topical skin therapies. The new wave in our future of healing.

S: It's like 30 years old.

E: In the year 2024.

C: And radium therapy.

E: Makes postdictions, not predictions. She also gave some usual stuff, election stuff such as, oh, well, here we go. President Biden will not finish his term. Kamala Harris will become the new president when Biden steps down. Did not happen.

C: Whoops.

E: Donald Trump will pick a woman as his vice president running mate. That did not happen. She delves into economics. Real estate will dip with interest rates two and three quarters points down. That did not happen. It was more like one point. Currency and cryptocurrency and Bitcoin get more regulated in 2024, whatever that means. But no. Oh, and then there's earthquakes and floods the usual kind of stuff. Anybody can predict that. Oil is up due to what's happening in the Middle East. Prices go up in 2024. That did not happen either. They went down. Leadership changes. Did these leaders lose their power? Vladimir Putin?

C: Absolutely not.

J: No.

E: Zelensky from Ukraine?

J: No.

E: Trudeau, Canada?

C: No.

E: Pope Francis?

C: No.

J: No.

E: She was 0 for 4 there.

C: Whoops.

E: All right. And here's her final bit of wisdom for us all as we head into 2024. Remember, this was a year ago she wrote this. Remember, we are in an eight year. The number eight has infinity to it metaphorically. It means respect and love are limitless. So even though there will be lots of hell-raising and conflict this year around the world, we'll return back to love and spirituality of what humans are, souls.

J: Wow.

E: There you go. And people pay for that because she has a phone number and book your session and give her lots of money. OK.

J: Yeah, I found somebody named Athos Salome.

E: Oh, that's a cool name.

J: I know. I thought it was a great psychic name. He has a subheading to his name. He's the living Nostradamus.

B: Oh, yeah.

S: Everyone wants to be the living Nostradamus.

J: I'm sure that he gave himself that name. So there was three things that this guy said that World War III was imminent in 2024. He said, the worst is yet to come, suggesting the possibility of a global conflict. Then we have cyber threats, identified cyber warfare as a significant threat to global security, highlighting the potential for hacker attacks leading to global failures. Now, I was thinking about this. If you read that every year for the last 15 years, that would have been an accurate prediction.

E: There you go. The more vague, the more accurate.

J: What I mean, but it's like, really, dude, that's your prediction? Cyber attacks, they're happening every second of every day.

E: How many letters I got this year in the mail saying, your information may have been compromised. We're giving you a free year of credit protection. I got about nine of them over the course of the year.

J: I get so many phishing attempts. I get phone calls now. Live people scam phone calls.

E: These are from banks and all these companies and stuff who can't stop it. They don't know how to get it under control, the most sophisticated companies.

C: Whoops. Social security numbers out there. Sorry.

E: That's that. Again.

J: Then he's got one more here. The South China Sea tensions. He predicted a critical event in the South China Sea that could disrupt military and communication systems of superpowers.

E: That's where Godzilla comes out of the ocean in the South China Sea.

J: But this guy's doing the same thing. We should name this type of prediction. It's basically like, yeah, they're reading the news and they're going, statistically, this seems like it's going to be a hit.

S: Yeah. Well, there's a few types of predictions that the psychics make, and given that, they still do horribly. So one is the vague prediction, which we had a lot of examples of, that there will be an earthquake. The things that are just so vague that you could match them to anything. Another one is this thing that's currently happening is going to continue to happen. There will be wars. There will be global warming. There will be whatever. Another one's just a high probability prediction. Then there's the predictions that sound more specific than they are. They're not really specific, but they kind of can sound like they are.

C: That's like the horoscope prediction.

S: Yeah, like the horoscope. I see a red door kind of thing, where it sounds like a really specific prediction. You don't realize how common it is. Like a plane will crash with red in its tail fin. You mean like 85% of the airlines out there? And then there's the ones, there's the shot in the dark, right, where they just sort of make these lateral left field predictions that, and they're just counting on the fact that people will forget them. But if they hit, if like one of their hundred out of left field predictions hits, that's the one they're going to broadcast to the world.

B: For years, for the rest of their career.

E: Yes. Correct, Bob. That's right. For years. I mean, I saw psychics touting correct predictions from 2003 on this year's prediction.

B: Yeah, what have you predicted lately?

S: Now let's see how the Rogues did last year. I'm going to go first. I believe I got four out of four, but you tell me what you think.

B: Wait, I thought it was three.

C: Yeah, I only did three.

S: I threw it.

E: Steve gave us a bonus one.

S: I gave you a bonus one.

C: Oh, okay.

S: All right. So my first prediction, a health scare will cause Biden to drop out of the presidential race, causing the Democrats to scramble for a replacement.

E: There it is.

J: Good job.

S: 100%.

C: That's very good.

S: Right?

B: Yeah. Did they really scramble that much?

C: Yes.

S: I mean, they scrambled. I mean, for a short period of time.

C: They scrabled, they could have done it much sooner than they did. That was the scramble.

S: Yeah, it was a scramble because it was so late. Yeah. All right. This is the softest one. This is the most ambiguous. The total solar eclipse in April will be only the second most interesting astronomical event of 2024. Now I did look up astronomical events of 2024, and some sites do give the naked eye visible comet as the most interesting because it was unexpected. Eclipses are predictable, like everyone knew that it was going to happen. But like an unexpected naked eye visible comet, this is a comet 2024 S1 Atlas, I think that was it, it discovered in September 2024. So anyway, that's one of the little ambiguous, but there's at least a candidate. Number three was 2024 will be the warmest year on record. Got that one. But that was too easy, which is why I gave a fourth one. A new CRISPR-based drug will get regulatory approval in 2024. That happened. Those were the two blood-borne, the thalassemia and the sickle cell CRISPR drugs were approved in 2024.

C: Yeah, yeah.

E: Well, yeah.

S: I made high probability predictions. The Biden one was the one that was a little out of left field, but that was a pretty good hit.

B: Yeah, it's your best one.

E: I think of the four, that's the one.

S: I mean, come on, if any psychic had that record, they would be screaming it from the rooftops, right?

E: Steve, you could charge $350 an hour for a session with them.

J: That was good, Steve.

S: Yeah. I think that was my best year. All right. Cara, you go.

C: Okay. So my first... No, mine are terrible. I feel like I can't go next.

E: You want someone else to go?

C: I used the vague method. I used the vague... Okay. 2024 will be the hottest year on record.

J: Yep.

S: Correct.

C: A new COVID surge will occur early in 2024. And I was just looking at the trends across 2024. And there are two large spikes. And one was in like, January 13th was the highest death toll in 2024. And then the next spike was in September. So I'd say January 13th was early. I'm going to give myself a point on that. And then this last one, I'm still struggling to figure out the exact number. But I said, more than 15 species will go extinct in 2024. But I don't think we know yet the full number because it's January 2nd, 2025.

B: What's typical?

C: Yeah. I don't even know the background extinction rate. But I mean, I am finding website after website of just like long lists. It's actually really depressing. Why do I keep doing this to myself?

E: Yes. I've done that before as well, Cara.

C: Yeah.

E: I moved off of that.

C: The Roaming Toad, the Spix's Macaw, the Socorro Isopod, the Socorro Dove, Pear David's Deer, Kehansi Spray Toad, the Morian Viviparous Tree Snail, the Marbled Swordtail Fish, the Hawaiian Crow, the Guam Kingfisher. This is so sad. Why do I do this? I'm going to come up with happier ones this year. Nope. I already came up with those.

E: can find that each year they take some animals or things off of the endangered list.

C: That's true. They like spot something.

E: Yeah. Yeah.

S: But sometimes they come off the endangered list because they're extinct.

C: That's true too. Jesus.

S: So you have to see why they were taken off.

E: But also because conservation efforts do make a difference.

C: Yeah. They are too.

S: They do. They absolutely do. So Cara, in 2023, 23 species were taken off of the endangered list because they were declared extinct. So I think we'll at some point get an official number for 2024.

C: Yeah. And I think it will probably be over 15. I will say there have been two wins here, reintroduction programs for the Przewalski's horse and the black-footed ferret have both been pretty successful. So the horse was a wild horse species in Central Asia that was classified as extinct in the wild in 1996. It was then reintroduced. And although there's a small population, it's increasing in the wild now. And the black-footed ferret was designated extinct in the wild. But because of reintroduction programs, there are some self-sustaining populations in the wild now. So that's pretty cool.

S: Yeah. That's good. All right, Evan, what did you do in 2023?

E: My three predictions were as follows. Number one, the summer Olympics, France will suffer a major blackout during the Olympics causing massive delays in events. Here's a headline from the early in the Olympics, Paris blackout sparks chaos as Olympics get underway. Woohoo. Okay. But here's the details. Well, hang on. I'll read you the first paragraph. In Paris, Egyptian darkness took over. On the night from Saturday to Sunday, numerous photos and videos from the French capital appeared on social media. They show that the streets of the multi-million metropolis were completely dark. Services are explaining what caused the blackout, blah, blah, blah. But here's the thing. Yes. And there was a brief power outage in Paris during the 2024 Olympics, limited to a few districts, did not affect the Eiffel Tower, lasted about 10 minutes.

C: Hey, I think it's still chaos, dang it.

E: There was a blackout. It just wasn't major.

C: Did you say it was major?

S: Yes.

E: I said major. I know.

S: Literally used the word major.

B: Fail.

C: Well, now see, you're going to learn from your mistakes this year.

E: That's right. That's right. And then I'll up my price to people for my predictions.

S: Yeah. If you just said, France will suffer a blackout during Olympics causing chaos, 100%, you would have got it. You got too specific, Evan.

E: How dare I?

C: Yep.

E: How dare I try to actually help people with my predictions? Second prediction, predicated, in 2023, IBM developed a quantum processor chip which consists of more than 1,000 qubits. My prediction, by the end of 2024, a company will announce the development of a 10,000 qubit QC or quantum chip. Let's have a look and see what happened here. So in June 2024, IBM reportedly partnering with Japan's AIST to develop 10,000 qubit quantum computer. So they started the development.

S: Yeah. Multiple companies are working on a 10,000 qubit chip, but none of them developed it.

E: They didn't get there. They announced it, though. But that was what I said, though. By the end of 2024, a company will announce the development of a 10,000 qubit.

S: Yeah. Okay.

C: I like your vague wording, Evan. That was really smart.

E: Yeah. I know. It had double meanings.

C: They announced the development.

E: You could take it in various ways.

C: Yes.

E: So that was good. I get extra psychic points for that.

C: I think you do.

S: Saved by day.

E: 2026 or 2028 is now when they think that they'll actually be up and running. Third one, commercial real estate foreclosures in the United States will exceed 10% where 8% was expected. Well, we don't have the exact numbers yet. However, we do have through the third quarter, we have three quarters of data because obviously the fourth quarter just ended. Commercial real estate foreclosures are surging across the United States. Foreclosures climbing 48% in September year over year. I looked at the month by month trends for each of the first nine months of the year. They were all up. In fact, the highest one, there was a 238% increase when compared – I think it was March compared to the year prior. So although I don't have all the data yet, this one is trending probably towards being true if that holds. That one is going to hold. So I did not do all that badly. I got a little too specific for my own good. Otherwise, I would have had a really good psychic year.

'S: All right. Good job, Evan. Bob, what do you got?

E: Thanks.

B: I'll start with my favorite one. This was a weather prediction. April 8th, 2024 will absolutely be overcast over much of if not all of Texas.

E: You were right.

B: I think I absolutely nailed it.

E: You were right.

B: In the best way because the area that we were in cleared up at the last possible moment. So that was like –

S: We have our cake and eat it too.

B: Yeah, that was wonderful. The rest of my predictions, not so much. Prediction number two for 2024, open AI will release chat GPT-5 in 2024. I already failed, which will be sapient enough to realize it doesn't want anything to do with us and will leave the earth to uplift the microbes currently under the ice on Europa. So yeah, that didn't happen.

S: But that is another genre of predictions, by the way. It is.

C: Unprovable?

S: No, it's the prediction that is so crazy no one really expects it to come true. It's just entertaining in its own right. You know what I mean?

B: I aim to entertain. And then my third prediction, the moon will be hit by a large asteroid visible from earth, greatly enhancing our efforts to track and detect and deal with near-earth asteroids or – yeah, asteroids.

E: I wish that were true.

B: That would have been cool to have. Imagine having a video of something hitting the moon with a huge ejecta and –

E: Do you think we have cameras on the moon all – monitoring it at all times?

B: No.

C: Why not?

E: Around the planet? I mean–

C: It's not that far away.

E: - is something always looking and recording the moon?

C: Well, maybe the near side.

B: Yeah, I would think if something dramatic happened on the moon, there'd be a video somewhere.

C: That it would happen on the far side. And we wouldn't see it.

B: Yeah. Right?

E: But AI is going to come along and show us something that's not true. It's going to look so cool.

C: What is that Murphy's Law? Murphy's Moon Law?

E: Yes.

C: Is that the Butter Toast Law? No?

S: Butter always lands butter side down.

E: Yeah. Exactly.

C: It only happens on the far side of the moon.

S: All right, Jay.

J: All right, my first one, Netanyahu will be unseated as Israeli prime minister.

C: Nope.

B: Nope.

J: I felt like it was going to happen all year. It never happened. The Tesla Cybertruck will have horrible sales and end production.

E: No.

B: Oh.

C: No, but one did catch on fire the first day of –

S: That's true.

B: And one blew up yesterday.

C: That's what I said.

B: But that was intentional.

C: That was yesterday. That's what I said.

J: The Cybertruck has been a massive failure.

C: They are everywhere in LA, you guys. It's so crazy.

E: Well, I've seen it in Connecticut now almost regularly on the roads.

B: Really?

E: They're around here.

S: It's more complicated than that. I mean their sales are very low when compared to other Tesla products. But they're not low when compared to other trucks in the same class.

C: Really?

E: Well, I mean if somebody is going to spend $120,000 on a vehicle –

S: Oh, for the cost. Yeah. But production didn't end. So I think that –

J: No, it did not. But I've read so many negative things about the Cybertruck. The list just continues to grow.

E: So don't get you one. Got it.

J: I said that the movie Godzilla Minus One will win an Oscar and it did.

S: Won multiple Oscars.

E: Did it?

J: That was my only win.

S: That was a solid win.

C: Yeah. Because that's – yeah. I don't think people expected that.

J: Yeah. They did well. They definitely did well. And then my last one, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will win the Nobel Peace Prize and he did not win it.

C: Not yet.

J: No, no.

S: That was Nihon Hidankyo, which was the guy who started the grassroots organization for atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not Zelensky.

C: Yeah. I just mean there's not still time this year. There's still time.

E: Well, sure. You can predict it again for 2025 if you want.

S: So one out of four, Jay, is what I gave you.

J: Not bad.

S: Not bad.

E: Better than most.

S: All right. Let's go on to 2025. I have four predictions again for 2025.

E: You did four again?

S: Because I'm doing like a bonus one as my weather prediction at the end. All right.

E: All right.

S: Prediction number one, the Russia-Ukraine war will enter a new, more dangerous phase.

C: So vague. I love it.

S: It's very specific.

E: Already correct.

S: Number two, a potential technosignature will be discovered that will defy explanation throughout 2025. So it will not be definitively explained in 2025.

E: I like that one.

J: Gotcha.

E: I like that one.

S: Three, AI applications will cross the uncanny valley, producing generative video indistinguishable from real footage.

E: Shoot.

C: Do not like.

E: I was afraid of that.

S: And four, here's my weather prediction, 2025 will not be the warmest year on record, but it will be in the top five.

C: Oh, look at that.

E: Bucking the trend.

S: That's called La Nina, folks.

C: Oh, so you actually did research. Crap. I didn't.

E: I looked into it.

C: I did not.

E: Well, you're next, Cara.

C: Like a true psychic. I just pulled them out of my ass.

S: You just winged it. It's from the hip.

C: Yeah. A stable democracy will fall when an elected leader successfully abolishes term limits.

J: Oh, boy. Cara, what the hell?

E: What are you doing? What are you doing?

C: I didn't say which country, okay?

E: Cara. You just gave everyone odds, you know.

C: All right. H5N1 will mutate to become transmissible from person to person.

E: These are happy predictions.

S: Oh, boy.

E: Where's the love and the harmony and stuff? Give me that.

C: Hey, man. 2024 to 2025 was not the best transition. Okay. 2025 will be the hottest year on record. God damn it.

E: Wow. You and Steve.

C: Pitting against each other.

E: Head to head.

B: One of you will win.

S: Not necessarily. I also said it will be in the top five. Maybe it isn't.

E: Three more predictions, 2025. My first one has to do with catastrophe. A bridge on an interstate highway system will collapse causing zero fatalities.

C: You're right. You've got a nice optimism there.

E: Yeah, see what I did there? I turned something horrible and made it a story of no injury. Number two, technology. A computer will achieve 1.99 petaflops, becoming the new champion of supercomputers. So by comparison, in 2024, 1.74 petaflops was tops. I went just short of 2.0, that was for you, Bob.

B: Thank you, man, that'd be cool.

E: And my third prediction, astronomy. Supernova explosions, not one, but three of them will be visible to the naked eye.

B: Oh, come on, what?

E: Yeah, you heard it here first. See you in a year.

B: Three?

S: Evan, at the same time, or just in 2025?

E: No, I didn't say that.

S: I'm asking you.

B: That would be crazy.

E: Would you like me to read it again?

S: But what do you think? Will it be at the same time? If you're gonna go crazy, go crazy.

E: No, no, there will be three distinct events.

S: Oh, okay.

E: All right? Visible to the naked eye.

S: If you predict one, that would be huge. Predicting three.

E: I said three, I am tripling down.

S: If that happens, I will reconsider my views on your predictive powers.

E: Holy jeez, I can't wait.

S: That would mean the odds of that are so incredible.

E: Did you do any research about supernovas?

S: Well, it's one per century, right, in our galaxy?

B: In a typical, yeah, typical galaxy, but yeah.

S And how many of them would be naked eye visible?

C: He didn't say during the day.

S: It's true.

E: I did not say during the day.

S: So let's say, if we could just use the one out of 100, but then times three is one in a million? Did I get that right?

E: Yeah, well, you heard it.

B: It's probably even more than, don't forget, the naked eye, that means that it's probably relatively close, right?

S: I know, I'm just assuming one to 100, like at the low end, it's a million to one. It could be even.

E: I did not pull that out of the air. I did some research into this, actually, and used some information to make this prediction.

C: He's insider trading on supernova.

S: You think Betelgeuse is gonna go up?

E: Oh, the Betelgeuse thing? Yes, Steve, the Betelgeuse thing is one of them.

S: Even just saying Betelgeuse will go supernova in 2025, that's a huge prediction, because it could still happen any time over the last, I don't know what, thousands of years? It's still relatively close, but relatively close is still thousands of years. All right, we'll see what we'll see.

E: I still have a lot to talk about.

B: By definition.

S: Bob?

B: Okay, prediction one. ChatGPT-5 won't be released until mid-2025, a year later than initially anticipated, and I'm gonna add more. It will be even more lackluster than anticipated. However, this will not start the third AI winter. There's been two winters in the past, where there was so much hype. This is in the 70s and 80s to mid-90s. There was so much hype that inevitably didn't live up to it and funding dried up. I don't think that would happen here. Maybe a little bit. If ChatGPT-5 is real shit, it may be a little bit, but they're too invested, and I think there's still a lot could be done with it.

E: We've come too far to turn back.

B: Let's see, number two, and echoing Cara, full-on bird flu epidemic.

C: Ooh, no.

B: Person to person. The mutation will happen in 2025, but I said epidemic. I could have, I considered predicting pandemic, but I said, nah. If it is a pandemic, then I predict America will have the worst deaths.

S: You gotta learn the psychic speed. You gotta say epidemic, if not a pandemic. Like, you hedge your bets, but you still take credit for the whole thing.

C: But you are hedging, because if you say epidemic, it's always an epidemic before it's a pandemic.

S: You wanna get credit for the pandemic if it occurs. So you say, if not a pandemic. All right, anyway.

B: Yeah, if I cared, I might've considered that. And third prediction, Nosferatu will win more Academy Awards than any other horror movie ever.

S: That's a solid prediction.

C: Yeah, I like it.

B: Loved it, loved the movie.

S: We saw it last night. It was really good.

B: Highly recommended. Wonderful, what an art piece. My God, beautiful.

S: Oh, the cinematography was-

B: Acting, writing.

E: The one from 100 years ago?

B: It was incredible.

S: It was beautiful and horrible at the same time. You know what I mean?

B: Yeah, solid, solid, solid movie at every level, pretty much, so I recommend it.

S: All right, Jay.

J: All right, you ready, guys? The prices of groceries won't go down in the United States.

C: Great prediction.

E: When you have two kids, they don't need all the money, you understand.

B: It's hard, it's hard.

J: No company will ultimately achieve general AI. In order to make this fair, though, I have to define what I'm talking about. Okay, so here's my definition of artificial general intelligence. This refers to a form of AI that possesses the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide variety of tasks in a manner similar to human intelligence. So I repeat, no company will achieve general AI in 2025. I think, Cara, you and I agree on this one. The war between Ukraine and Russia will end. Didn't you say that?

S: No, I said it will enter a more dangerous phase.

J: Somebody said it's good that war's gonna end, I thought.

C: No, you said it in your mind.

J: All right. Well, you agree with me anyway. And my final one, I agree with Bob here. The world will have another pandemic. Many Bothans will die.

S: Okay. All right, there we are. We put our nickels down.

E: Yeah.

S: Put ourselves up against the psychics. I think, overall, over the years, we do better than they do.

E: Which is...

S: Which is not hard. All right, we're gonna go on to some news items.

News Items

Space Exploration in 2025 (34:51)

• Calendar of space events 2025 

S: Jay, you're gonna start us off by, some of these are still look-ahead kind of news items. It's the first episode of the year. Jay, tell us about space exploration in 2025.

J: Yeah, I'm gonna hit some of the highlights. There's a very long list of things that are gonna happen in regards to space exploration. There's also quite a number of visual events, like comets and all sorts of stuff like that. You should read up on those. But these are the launches and the missions, right? We have the Lunar Trailblazer and NovaSea IM-2 lunar mission. This is gonna happen at some time in January. This is a joint mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service. And it's led by the private company, Intuitive Machines. And the NovaSea IM-2 lander will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. It'll carry several NASA payloads. And among those, they'll have something called the Lunar Trailblazer, which is an orbiter designed to map the moon's water ice and hydroxyl deposits. So this is pretty cool. I am looking forward to this and it's gonna happen soon. So everybody keep your eyes open. I'm hoping that there's video cameras on this thing so we can watch it land. We have the Blue Ghost lunar mission. This is also January of 2025. This is a separate CLPS mission led by the Firefly Aerospace. And the Blue Ghost lunar lander will carry something called the Lunar Planet Vac. What do you think they're gonna do with that?

B: They're going to suck out all the atmosphere.

J: No, it is an advanced sampling instrument designed to collect surface material from the moon. I think this is pretty cool. You know, we need more moon rock. We definitely need it for research. But it's just a cool thing to have. Guy, could you imagine? There was a half a second when I thought Bob gave me and Steve a piece of moon rock for Christmas. It wasn't true.

E: Nah wah!

B: It was even better.

J: So the other payloads that this is gonna include, there'll be scientific equipment to study the lunar surface and environment. And the mission will aim to expand knowledge about the moon's resources and environment while demonstrating technologies for future exploration. It's so wordy, right? The Europa Clipper Gravity Assist. This is in March. This is NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft. It'll conduct a gravity assist at Mars and it'll fly within 950 kilometers. This is 600 miles of the planet. The maneuver will adjust the spacecraft's trajectory for its journey to Jupiter where it will set to study the icy moon Europa. The mission's ultimate goal is to investigate Europa's subsurface oceans for signs of habitability.

S: Can I see if it's habitable?

J: It's habitable. So this thing, I talked about this. I was very excited talking about this news item last year. This is the one that's gonna fly through the ejecta. Hopefully it'll get to fly through some ejecta from the moon, which is essentially one of the water spouts. Very cool. I mean, this could be amazing if it hits. It's gonna be a big one. We have a Lucy flyby of asteroid Donald Johansson. April 20th of this year.

S: You know who Donald Johansson is?

J: He's a flyby.

S: But the asteroid was named after Donald Johansson.

J: Yeah, he's a guy.

S: Yeah, I'm asking you if you know who he is.

J: No.

C: Isn't he the guy who discovered Lucy?

E: Scarlett's brother?

B: He's an astronaut?

S: Yes, that's correct.

C: Oh, yeah, right? No, he's not an astronaut. He's a, yeah, he discovered Lucy in Ethiopia. I interviewed him on my podcast.

S: Yeah, that's correct.

J: That's great.

C: Yeah, he's a really interesting guy.

S: Yeah, paleoanthropologist.

J: So the spacecraft is called Lucy, and it'll fly past asteroid 52246, Donald Johansson, and it's located in the asteroid belt. And this asteroid, named after the discovery of Lucy fossil, is the second target in a mission to explore multiple asteroids. So I think that one's cool. Then we click forward to May. We have the Tianwen-2 mission. This is in May 2025. China's ambitious mission will target 469219 Kamo'oluwa. It's a quasi-moon of Earth. I love the word quasi, by the way. So it's a quasi-moon of Earth, and they're gonna try to collect samples from the asteroid and then return them to Earth. And if the primary mission is complete, it will continue towards comet 311P, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's gonna go to a comet, and it'll make it a dual-purpose mission, which is always good. And its goals include advancing knowledge about small celestial bodies, planetary formation, and potential asteroid mining. Which guys, asteroid mining, that is getting closer and closer as the years click by, man. So we have a couple more. The JUICE Gravity Assist at Venus. This is in August, late August this year. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, named JUICE, right? Juicy, right? Can you do that? Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer. Yeah, it works.

E: Yep, that's it.

J: Led by the European Space Agency, this will perform a gravity-assist maneuver near Venus to adjust its trajectory towards Jupiter. This is pretty cool. There's gonna be an Earth flyby with this thing. Going out to 2031, it'll focus on the planet's icy moons, and it will study their potential habitability and subsurface oceans. So we have a couple of missions going out to Jupiter. And then the last one is the end of Juno's extended mission. So this goes to September of 2025, NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016. It will conclude its extended mission. It was originally designed for 37 orbits, and Juno has basically provided us with groundbreaking data on Jupiter's atmosphere, which is great. Also its magnetic field and its internal structure. During this extended mission, Juno studied Jupiter's moons and auroras, and the mission is expected to end with the spacecraft intentionally deorbiting into Jupiter to avoid contaminating its moons. And once it goes down into Jupiter, it'll be basically reduced down to an eighth of an inch and stay there till the end of time.

S: You know what's not happening in 2025?

J: What is not happening?

S: The Artemis II mission, which was delayed from September 2025 now to April 2026.

J: They suck.

S: NASA's not saying it's going to happen in April of 2026. They're saying it's not going to happen before April of 2026.

B: Oh, that's even worse.

E: More delays.

J: Oh my God, yeah. I mean, there's so many things that they don't have ready. They don't even have the spacesuits fully dialed in.

B: Wow.

S: They're making progress, but yeah, of course it's slower than they say. You know, that would have been a low-hanging fruit prediction. The Artemis mission will be delayed.

J: You're right, Steve.

S: Of course it will be. All right. Thank you, Jay.

Most Likely Emerging Diseases (41:57)

• Which infectious disease is likely to be the biggest emerging problem in 2025? 

S: Cara, so keeping on your upbeat theme, you're going to tell us about emerging diseases in 2025.

C: We talked, I think it was the last time we met, or it might've been the time before that, because what is time really over the holidays? About-

B: Time is calories.

C: Right, about H5N1, bird flu, and the number of cases that we have seen so far. I think the count, I mean, it continues to rise, but well over 60 here in the US. Globally, we're talking about kind of almost a thousand cases over the last couple of decades. So this is not like, it's a very rare phenomenon that people get highly pathogenic avian influenza. So that's type A H5N1. The reason it's so rare, once again, is because it's a spillover event that is then not transmissible from person to person. So that's why outbreaks aren't happening. There are massive outbreaks among birds, both wild and domesticate, and also massive outbreaks among cows here in the US and abroad. But we're not seeing epidemic proportions of bird flu because bird flu is not yet transmissible from person to person. But as I mentioned, the last time I covered this story, researchers discovered that the only one mutation is necessary, one mutation, not a series of mutations like they used to think in order for this to become highly pathogenic from person to person. So obviously this is on everybody's radar that this could be the epidemic or pandemic of 2025 or moving forward. But when we actually look at the not what ifs, but the what ares, what do you think are the three biggest, let's say, diseases of concern, infectious diseases of concern worldwide?

S: I mean, isn't Ebola always on that list?

C: Ebola's scary. So I shouldn't say biggest. I should say maybe most common. So the infectious diseases that cause the most concern globally. Ebola, yes, is very, very scary, but it's not in the top three. Think about one of the most ongoing pandemics.

S: Well, HIV.

C: Yeah, HIV. Okay, so that's viral. There's one that's parasitic, and we see it in many, many countries.

S: Malaria.

C: Malaria. And then there's one that's bacterial, and it makes you cough blood.

S: Tuberculosis.

C: Tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection. And so these three globally are kind of consistently on the lists. COVID is not anymore. And why is COVID no longer in the top three?

S: Vaccines.

C: Vaccines, yes. Because we have very, very effective vaccines. And treatments available as well. And then, of course, there are different watch lists of different pathogens that are becoming drug-resistant or that are sort of ebbing and flowing in the background. But the bird flu is kind of on everybody's radar as sort of our biggest candidate right now. And part of the reason that it is scary is, well, it's multifold. It's multifactorial. One of them is that the mortality rate among human infections is around 30%. That's not good. We don't like that. Another reason is because I mentioned before, we are potentially one mutation away from this becoming transmissible from person to person. And even if it does not become transmissible yet, the occurrence of bird flu happening in isolated spillovers is becoming more of a reality. And why is that if our cows have bird flu?

S: Because of the raw milk?

C: Yes, because we literally have people in positions of public influence advocating for drinking milk that has the potential to be infected by bird flu. Mind-boggling. It's really scary, right? Because up until now, most of the cases have been from farm workers and from people drinking raw milk. Most of the cases have been spillovers from cows and they've happened from both of those incidences. And so we're seeing that there is a movement to prepare, right? The UK is stockpiling their 5 million doses of vaccine, H5 vaccine, kind of they're ready. There are pandemic preparedness plans for bird flu that have been developed and then reiterated over and over. But I got to admit, I'm concerned here in the US and I don't think historically, I have had this level of concern about our ability to successfully prepare and mitigate a potential disaster like that.

S: We are living in the first act of a horror movie, a hundred percent, right?

C: Right. And we've seen it. It's like the foreshadowing is because of evidence. It's like we lived it, we don't want to live it again. And so really I think remembering that HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, and obviously many others, those are only the top three, are continue to be these global detriments, these quote, slow pandemics. We have to remember too, that even though here in the US and in many developed nations, we have the privilege of thinking of these as either diseases of the past or chronic diseases, they aren't. And they could just as easily rear their ugly heads here. Again, HIV is still a public health threat here in the US, although we have really good drugs to help prevent and manage. Tuberculosis could just as easily come back. So could a number of diseases if we continue to bend to anti-vax rhetoric. And malaria could continue to spread throughout the globe directly as a function of human displacement and shifting climate. The actual makeup of the globe is changing. And so the things that were potential threats in the past are potentially more threatening now. And there are new risks that are popping up. The good news is across the globe, there are a lot of very dedicated people, public health experts, epidemiologists, researchers, who this is what they do. The bad news is they can't do it without funding and they can't do it without public support and governmental support. And so we have to hold our elected officials accountable. We have to remember that these risks are real.

S: My biggest concern is that the very notion of public health is under assault. We saw that during the COVID pandemic, the idea that personal liberty supersedes public health, which doesn't make sense. It doesn't make moral or ethical sense. Like for example, one person who chooses to drink raw milk and gets the bird flu could be the infection in which that mutation happens that causes it to result in human to human spread, which causes a pandemic, which is basically gonna be COVID, but with 30% mortality rather than the whatever, 0.1% or 1%, whatever it was at the end of the day. So that one person's liberty is not more important than the health of the world and the millions of people who could potentially die from such an outbreak. It's nonsense.

C: And the issue is this rhetoric isn't new, but its ability to take hold and its ability to be repeated and promoted at the highest levels of government is. Like when you look back at the archives during 1918, there were people marching against masks.

S: There were anti-maskers in 1918, 100%.

C: Yeah, the rhetoric's not new, but it's really taken hold in a way that is frightening, that really it hadn't back then.

S: Well, it's been politicized in a very dangerous way. So did the public health officials respond perfectly in hindsight to the pandemic? Of course not. They admitted we're building this plane as we're flying it. They made mistakes. They made reasonable assumptions, some of which turned out to be not entirely accurate. You have to make trade-offs. You could Monday morning quarterback them all the time. But we're living in a political environment in which those kinds of things gets turned into, we can't trust the elites. We can't trust the experts. You know, they're assaulting our liberty for pseudoscience, whatever. It turns into a really toxic, corrupt way of viewing public health. Really just setting us up for the next pandemic to completely fail to deal with the next one. That's the situation we're in.

C: Because it only works if we all work together.

S: Right, right. And now, as you said, we have the worst possible people in charge. You know, it's like, when I said horror movie, I'm imagining like you're watching the early scenes of a movie. You know, you basically know what the movie's about. Like the people who are the protagonists are having a conversation. And in the background, on the TV, is RFK Jr. talking about whatever nonsense, these conspiracy theories he's talking about. And like, the audience knows that's the guy who's gonna destroy the world in this movie. Right, that's, obviously I'm not doom and glooming this. I'm not saying this is what's going to happen. But I'm just saying, we are, the pieces are in play. Right, this, as you said, this is the foreshadowing. When we look back and ask, how did this possibly happen? We know how it happened. The pieces are all there.

C: And it reminds me, Steve, of when we've talked about filmmaking, like the art of filmmaking. And one of your biggest frustrations is when an antagonist or a protagonist, even, just like continues to fail through ineptitude. Like, and that's why the plot is moved forward, as opposed to there being these outside forces. It's like, it's lazy filmmaking. I feel like we are, we are in a, we are in lazy life right now. And it's so scary.

S: I know.

B: Oh man, we'll have a guy running our country who has, in the past, actually thrown away pandemic plans.

C: Right, the pandemic preparedness binder. He was like, we don't need this.

B: Like, basically, essentially burned it.

C: We don't need it.

B: It's like, here, this work has been, ah, fuck.

C: Yep.

S: Right, as I said, stock up on toilet paper, which is, just metaphorically, do whatever you have to do to be prepared for another COVID-like pandemic, but without a competent government in place.

Dark Energy May Not Exist (53:01)

• Cosmological foundations revisited with Pantheon+ 

S: All right, this next news item is very interesting. Bob and I are gonna tag team, and we're gonna both cover the same news item for two reasons. Partly because we both wanted to cover it, but also, it's a little complicated. I think we need both of us to really wrap our heads around this one. But go ahead, Bob, you're gonna start us off.

B: So, a new model of cosmology called Timescape, recent study on that came out, it claims to more accurately describe the expansion of the universe. In fact, it suggests that dark energy is not even required at all to explain what is being observed. So, potentially no dark energy? That got my attention. This is from monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society letters. The name of the paper is Supernovae Evidence for Foundational Change to Cosmological Models. Now, the biggest change in cosmology during my life, Steve, I'm sure you would agree with this, has been taking what I thought was essentially the totality of the universe, stars, planets, galaxies, life, et cetera, all the protons, neutrons, and electrons, essentially. Baryonic matter, basically. And it was shrunk down to only 5% of everything. And it seemed to happen fairly quickly. Now, that happened when we incorporated the dark sector, the so-called dark sector into the universe. That's dark matter and dark energy. Suddenly, we knew basically nothing about 95% of the universe. Dark matter, we all know this, right? Dark matter, it's this weird matter that only appears to reveal itself through gravity and how that gravity shapes structures all over the universe. Dark energy, discovered in 98. This was huge, huge, huge, huge news item. I mean, Nobel Prize in 2011. Supernova analysis showed that there was a mysterious energy inherent in space itself, causing its accelerated expansion. Very high-level definition, of course, but we've covered this in detail over the years. Now, I say we suddenly knew almost nothing because if you consider the entire mass energy of the universe, dark energy is 71%, dark matter, 24%. And all that we could see with our eyes and instruments is a paltry 5%. So if you're gonna create a standard model of cosmology, now, I've discussed the standard model of physics. There's also, of course, a standard model of cosmology. If you're gonna create this, then you would be correct if you think that it would have to focus on dark energy and dark matter, right? I mean, those are the big boys now. You know, 75% or 95% of the universe. So that model would have to include that, both of the entire dark sector in a big way. Now, the standard model of cosmology does just that, and it's called Lambda-CDM. Now, the name has two parts. Lambda, that's dark energy. CDM is cold dark matter, which is a very specific theory of dark matter. Cold in this context just means it's moving slower than light. This model, for years, it's offered just what you would want from such a model. It explains what we observe, and it makes testable predictions. Awesome. There's a problem, though. Recently, the Lambda, or the dark energy part of this cosmological model, has been getting beaten up lately. Here's a couple examples why. The cosmic microwave background radiation, the earliest radiation that we could see, early universe, was it a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang? It shows the early universe's expansion doesn't fit with the current expansion, creating what's called the Hubble tension, which is a whole other topic that is way out of scope of this talk here. So there's that. And then the second reason why dark energy has been taken a beating is a research instrument called DESI, which is the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, recently suggested that dark energy behaves differently than we have thought for all these years. Specifically, its strength has changed over time in a way that we just did not understand or have believed over the years. The authors argue that a different model called the timescape model, which accounts for the structure of the universe in the model itself, can account for supernova observations better than Lambda CDM. In fact, the lead author, Professor David Wiltshire, said, our findings show that we do not need dark energy to explain why the universe appears to expand at an accelerating rate. Steve?

S: Yeah, so this is where it gets interesting. I'm gonna just clarify a couple of things Bob said, or give more detail. The Hubble tension, that's a critical concept here. So just to go one layer more deep, this is problems with the cosmological constant, right? If you measure the cosmological constant with direct measurement, like type 1a supernova or Cepheid variables, you get one answer, 73 to 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec. If you measure it using the cosmic microwave background, you get a different number, 67 to 68. They don't agree.

B: And it's not instrument error, it's too big for that.

S: It's too big for that, and they don't even overlap. So that tells us something's wrong. There's something we don't know about the universe, or there's something wrong in whatever, in the way we're going about this. There's also another problem, and that is there are structures in the universe too large to exist if the cosmological constant, if dark energy exists. And we don't know how to resolve that problem either, right? So there's like, if you can calculate how big something could be in the universe in terms of like a gravitationally bound structure, and we have observed, directly observed structure bigger than the theoretical maximum, if lambda CDM is correct.

B: Which structures are those? Are those the quasars, Steve?

S: Yeah, there's like, there's the giant circle one. There's a few, but there's like two or three structures that are bigger than should exist at this point in time. There's also the fact that astronomers have absolutely no idea what dark energy is, right? They don't know what it is. They don't even know what it could be. They don't even know what could behave this way. It's something outside of our current model of matter energy in the universe. Hence dark, right?

B: Yeah, the biggest thing for me is that dark energy does not dilute, right? You have a parcel, so you have a square light year of space. And there's a certain amount of dark energy within that. If you go away and come back and that space has increased 10 times, each cubic light year still has the same amount of dark energy as do all the others that have been created. So that's why it just keeps getting stronger and stronger as you reach a critical, like a maximum amount of space. You're gonna really start noticing it. And that's why there were some predictions that you'd have the big rip where that expansion becomes so strong that it would actually rips apart matter at the atomic and subatomic level, which is really scary. Not very likely, even when we totally were buying into dark energy, but still like, wow, this is scary ideas.

S: All right, so now basically the situation is now there are two models of cosmology that explain the expansion of the universe. There is the Lambda CDM and TimeScape. The main difference between the two is that Lambda CDM assumes a uniform universe. Whereas TimeScape accounts for the lumpiness in the universe, right?

B: The structures that have been created.

S: The structure of the universe. So in other words, but we could say it another way, but so the Lambda CDM model basically says that at the scale that we are making our observations, the universe is statistically homogenous, right? So it depends on at what scale does the universe become statistically homogenous. And Lambda CDM says, well, at the scale where we're making our observations, and TimeScape says, nope, only much bigger than that. And at the scale where we're making observations, you cannot treat it as statistically homogenous. And remember, we've talked about this before, the homogenous basically has two parts to it, homogeneity, which is that every piece of the universe is like every other piece of the universe in terms of its mass density. And the other one is isotropy, that no matter what direction-

B: Is it isotropy? I like that pronunciation. Go ahead.

S: Isotropy or isotropy. No matter what direction you look in, the universe looks the same, right?

B: Yep. So no matter where you are and no matter which direction you look, it should all be homogenous.

J: Yeah, we agree.

B: That's the key difference. That's the key difference between these models.

S: But TimeScape says, nope, there's parts, there's voids and there's clumps of matter. And it's not statistically, you can't just say, all right, all averages out at the scale where we're making our observations, including observations of the Type Ia supernova that we use to measure the expansion of the universe. So this is where relativity comes in. This is interesting.

B: Yeah.

S: So relativity says that when matter causes time to slow down, right? Remember the movie with the black hole? You get close to the black hole and time slows down for you?

B: That's gravitational time dilation.

S: Yeah. And so time is traveling faster in the voids than in galaxies, right? And it's like significant. It's not a little bit. It's by, I think the number was 30%.

B: Yeah, they said 35. That did seem a little high, but still the point's taken.

S: Yeah, but it's significant. And so what the TimeScape model says is that the acceleration of the universe is an illusion. It's an illusion based upon the assumption of homogeneity in a non-homogeneous universe. So if time is traveling faster in the voids, the universe will be measured as expanding faster in the voids and expanding slower in the clumps, right? And as the universe expands, the voids get relatively bigger because we're not making more matter. It's just getting farther apart from each other.

B: Right, and TimeScape actually attaches a number to that. That's called the void fraction, which is very important in this model.

S: So yeah, the void fraction, the amount of the universe that's void increases, meaning more of the universe has faster time and therefore faster acceleration. So if we're just looking out at the universe, it looks as if over time, the expansion is happening at a faster and faster rate. When really, there's just bigger and bigger voids. And it's just an illusion of that. But when you account for local non-homogeneity, it all works out, right? So they did in their analysis, actually Bob, I'll disagree with you on one thing you said.

B: What?

S: And this is because of the way it's being reported. Actually, the LambdaCDM model and the TimeScape model did the same. They predicted-

B: Earlier in the universe.

S: If you look at the whole, all the data, they basically performed the same. They matched observation as well as each other. And so what this data they're looking at is the supernova 1A data. And we have more, this is the same data that was used in the 90s to say that the universe is accelerating. They're looking at the same data, but now we have 20 years or whatever, 30 years more data.

B: That's the Pantheon Plus data.

S: Yeah, the Pantheon Plus data. So it's a lot more data, a lot more detailed, more precise measurements. They crunched through all that numbers. They said, all right, we'll see. How well does TimeScape predict this data? How well does LambdaCDM predict this data? Overall, they did the same, but TimeScape did better in the local universe and the LambdaCDM did better in the early universe. But if you look at all the data, they're basically the same. So in other words, there's no reason, there's no reason to favor one over the other based upon this data. But they say TimeScape gives us the ability to fix the Hubble tension and to solve the problem of why are their structures bigger than LambdaCDM says there should be. So the authors say, they did a Bayesian analysis which just said, what's the probability that this is true? So they said strong to very strong. So this is not the final word and even the authors can't say based upon their analysis that LambdaCDM is not true or TimeScape is proven or there is no dark energy. They can't say that. The headlines are all, there's no dark energy, but we cannot say that based on this study. All we can say is there's two models now. One requires dark energy. One does not require dark energy and not requiring dark energy doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right? It just means that it's not required. So it's possible there may be a hybrid model, right Jay? It's a hybrid. That TimeScape may be a tweak on LambdaCDM because the thing is LambdaCDM has a lot of explanatory power. As I said, all models are wrong but some models are useful. LambdaCDM is a useful model. TimeScape may turn out to be a useful model too. We may end up using both of them to help explain things. But it may be that eventually as we take more detailed observations and we look at this, this can take years, maybe even decades, eventually one of these two models may emerge as the winner. As in other words, it just is more in line with the actual data. And we don't know how that's gonna go. Maybe they'll figure out some other way within LambdaCDM to figure out the Hubble tension. Or maybe that TimeScape really is the answer to that and that's because it's correct. It's more, it's closer to reality than LambdaCDM. Maybe we don't need dark energy in order to explain why the universe appears to be accelerating over time. I do like the, to me just aesthetically, the fact that TimeScape takes into account the structure of the universe and doesn't assume homogeneity that we know isn't there. It seems to be an advantage but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's correct. So it's really interesting scientific question and this is science at its best. You have two competing models. They're duking it out using data and math and logic. What Bob and I are describing to you is such a superficial metaphor level sort of description of what's going on. I actually tried to read the paper. I also tossed it into ChatGPT and had it explain to me what was going on. There is so much math going on. This is all math. You cannot actually understand what the scientists are talking about unless you know the real high level math that's going on. So this is really just like a layperson level, metaphor level description of what we're talking about.

B: Steve, I like this idea in TimeScape of this void fraction. How much of the universe is a void? And the bigger the voids, the more you could say that there's a disparity between these two models. Now, check this one out. When voids started dominating the overall volume, right? When the voids became big enough they were the big players in a given volume of the universe. When that happened, suspiciously, when Lambda CDM, at the same time, that's when Lambda CDM predicts the dark energy starts taking over. And that's right. Did you see that? That's telling. To me, that was like a very interesting point that shows that in a lot of ways, in some ways at least, TimeScape seems to make a decent case at least right now, initially, that dark energy could be, as we're describing, it could be, it could go away. It absolutely could go away. It's like another way to look at it is that this whole idea of acceleration, is it intrinsic to the universe itself or is it just really a consequence of how you look at this observational data and interpret it in a universe that's non-uniform? You have a non-uniform cosmos and just how you're interpreting that data can lead to dark energy or maybe you don't need dark energy.

S: Yeah, it's interesting. Does that make sense to you guys? I mean, it took us a long time to wrap our head around this and I hope we've sort of...

J: Yeah, I totally get it.

E: You did. TimeScape, winner.

S: Yeah, I mean, yeah. Unlike, for example, dark matter versus modified Newtonian dynamics, I think dark matter is kicking the crap out of MOND, right? I think dark matter actually does exist and I think that's like the 95% answer right now and I think that's going to emerge victorious.

E: With what, 40 years of science?

S: Yeah, and here, we have the CDN versus TimeScape, to me feels like a coin flip. I don't really have a, I don't really, at this point, think that I might have a slight edge towards TimeScape at this point in time, but that's only because I'm...

B: Well, I mean...

S: But who knows, I think...

E: Sounds cool.

B: We'll have to wait till it's vetted, but based on what they're saying, they're saying that they, TimeScape outperforms LambdaCDM in explaining the supernova 1A and other Pantheon plus observations. If you're outperforming it in that context, that's pretty damn good, pretty telling.

E: Significant.

B: It seems to me, that's important and yeah, but like we said, we got to reiterate, this is not definitive, they need to do more work, they need to fine tune it, so they're not there yet, but this is, I think this could eventually be an important paper. We'll see, we'll see what happens when, as more, as this paper is vetted and we do more research.

E: We need more math.

S: Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, other experts may look at this and go, ah the math is crap, move on. Like, it might not...

E: Forgot to carry the five.

S: We're just trying to understand what they're actually saying, right? I think we were able to do that.

Bigfoot Deaths (1:11:49)

• Two Portland men die while searching for Sasquatch in Skamania County 

S: Okay, Evan, now we're gonna get really serious now. This is like cutting edge science. You're gonna tell us about Bigfoot deaths.

E: For the first time that I can ever remember and you guys can let me know if you remember differently, Bigfoot now has a body count. I am not talking about dead Bigfoot bodies. I'm talking about a pair of Bigfoot enthusiasts who recently went into the wooded area of Skamania County, which is in the upper northwestern United State of Washington. This was back on December 24th, 2024, Christmas Eve day. Two men set out on their quest to find the mythical creature. And when they failed to return to their homes later that evening, the authorities were contacted and an all-out search began on Christmas day by more than five dozen rescue workers and volunteers. They utilized footage from something called a flock safety camera. I just learned about that. And this is how the search team located the vehicle. A flock safety camera is a type of automated license plate recognition piece of technology used by law enforcement. They were able to pick up the picture of the camera and find the vehicle. They actually found the vehicle. There is your starting point for the search. The men's car was located at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which is 1.3 million acres of forest, wildlife habitat, watersheds, mountains. It includes Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, among other sites to see there. That's a massive amount of territory to cover. And it did take them three days for the team to finally discover the bodies of the two men. The cause of the death was determined to be the result of weather exposure. And they were clearly ill-prepared to survive in overnight conditions at this time of year in this part of the country, yeah. So-

S: Nature will kill you dead.

E: It will kill you dead, yeah. And I'm about to get to that. Couple other things. The search for the men took place amid difficult terrain and harsh weather conditions. Yep, it's a tough time of year to be going out into the woods like that. Freezing temperatures, snow, high water levels, all made for a challenging search. Oh, by the way, in this county, if you harm Bigfoot, you will be fined $1,000 and perhaps go to jail for a couple of weeks. According to the Chamber of Commerce, it's a law meant to protect the mysterious creature and to prevent hunters with large beards from accidentally getting shot. This is what they said, yep. All right, in all seriousness though, here are some lessons to be learned here. These are my takeaways. First of all, have you guys ever heard of people dying in a search for Bigfoot? I don't recall.

J: No.

C: No.

E: This is my first recollection of anything like this taking place. So I can't say it's a common occurrence, but it's unfortunately a tragic occurrence in which, here we go again, believing in nonsense is not harmless. It is not. And here we have another example. I mean, do we even have to explain why Bigfoot does not exist in the first place?

S: Give a bullet.

E: Yeah, lack of physical evidence, no DNA, no bones, no remains, no fecal material. They have no habitat we've discovered, no nests, no dens, no tracks, only faked tracks, no actual tracks, no evidence of them eating food, no verified photos or videos. Again, we have plenty of fake photos and fake videos, but nothing.

S: Or misidentified photos.

E: Yeah, absolutely. And despite that amount, that incredible amount of negative evidence, you've got television shows, you've got podcasts, movies, books, organizations, and hey, right here, a government agency who are stoking the coals of the Bigfoot legend because, well, I don't know, there are groups of people who want to believe in these things that are not real. And then there are other groups of people who frankly in some way want to, in a sense, profit off of those beliefs of those people. So I don't know, I think everybody shares, I think everybody in these categories shares a very small piece of responsibility in the death of these two unfortunately gullible people. And they need to remember that, that there is harm involved with believing in nonsense. It may not always result in death like this, but in this case it did, and this is another reminder of that.

S: Now you could argue that Bigfoot is incidental to the story because these are two people who went into the woods in challenging weather conditions and they were ill-prepared. Apparently they weren't experienced and they were ill-equipped to deal with it, and that's what killed them. But I would argue, and I think it's what you're saying, is they probably wouldn't have done that if they weren't motivated by belief in Bigfoot. You know, they basically got in over their heads. And not that people will do that for other reasons, but that was the reason in this case, it seems.

E: Yeah, and I don't know enough about Bigfoot organizations and collectives and groups and stuff. Do they have classes that do teach people proper survival skills if they are gonna go venturing off into the woods?

S: I don't know, some might, but again.

E: Some might.

S: Do you really wanna get your survival skills from a Bigfoot believer? Seriously, that's part of the problem is that these amateur organizations, they're probably themselves ill-equipped to deal with this because the people involved and the motivation behind it, they're not serious organizations that have invest in the skill and resources and also will make good decisions about, no, we're not gonna go out in this weather.

E: There are stories of people who have hiked the Appalachian Trail in the United States. These are what you would consider either professional or amateur enthusiast hikers, and they know the rules of the trail. You don't go off the trail because they have found bodies like 100 feet off the trail. When you go looking for Bigfoot in a park or something like that, guess where you're, you're not staying on the trails. There are no Bigfoots on the trails, there are no Bigfoots, but you're not gonna find Bigfoot on the trail. Where are you going? You're going off the trail, folks. So you are already putting yourself into a massively more dangerous situation than you would have been had you just stuck to the trail in the first place.

S: The motivation to get more risky. But I mean, having said that, even professionals die because they get overwhelmed by the weather. This is dangerous, even for people who know what they're doing. If you're not-

E: Very dangerous. And don't rely on your cell phone to get you out of a, I mean, your cell phone is likely not going to work out. You have got to have the proper communication equipment. It has to be satellite-based devices, shortwave radio, shortwave walkie-talkies. I mean, those are the kinds of things that you really need to have. And I don't know what they were thinking, but you have to also assume, worst case scenario, you have to have a shelter with you, emergency blankets, dry rations, fire-starting materials, cold weather gear. You can't just go make it a day exploration into the woods to find Bigfoot or look for a bird or whatever it is you're gonna do. You have to, you have to be much better prepared for that. You're taking your life in your hands, and unfortunately, these two people died as a result.

S: Yep. All right, thanks, Evan.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:19:23)

S: Jay, it's Who's That Noisy Time. We're rebooting for the new year.

J: All right, guys, last week I played this noisy. [plays Noisy] Okay, any guesses, guys?

E: Well, it sounds as if somebody took a microphone or a camera and a microphone and sent it down something, a tunnel, a hole, a, that's what it was recording, that noise of its venture going wherever, you know.

J: That's not a bad guess, Ev.

E: All right.

J: Listener named Shane Hillier wrote in, said, it sounds like a rollercoaster ride before it starts, like when people are clicking in the locks and lap bars. I think that was a good guess, not correct. I've heard that noise many, many, many times. There's definitely a similarity, but it is not correct. Benjamin Greenberg wrote in, hi, Jay, after coming close last week, I'm feeling confident. This week's noisy has some industrial vibes, heavy reverberation, a mechanical propeller, like a hum with a Doppler effect. The clacking noises remind me of a very specific sound, air hockey. So I'm going to say this is a giant game of air hockey taking place in an airplane hangar. That is not correct. Visto Tutti wrote in, this end of year noisy sounds quite like being inside a tunnel under a road bridge. I've heard similar, the bridge creaking and cracking as traffic drives over above. That is not correct. Matthew Morrison wrote in, he said, hi, Jay, I think it sounds like someone picking up litter in a culvert under a highway. And his daughter thinks that it sounds like a really old bad quality video of people picking up weights at a gym. So that's not correct either. So do we have a correct answer? And the answer is yes. We have a couple of people that guessed. One person guessed really well. I'll start with that person. This is Mike Sarra's answer. I think this is the power down sequence of a large wind turbine from inside. And that is exactly what it is, guys. This is a large wind turbine powering down. And the video that goes along with this is amazing because of how much flex is happening in the tower when you're looking up the tower as this thing is shutting down, and it's bending like crazy. And there's all these different things moving around and everything. It's really complicated and kind of scary looking. And that's what happens when a wind turbine is shut off and it slowly winds down to a stop. Another listener named Cooper Parrish wrote in with a close guess, but I wanted to mention it because I know how hard this one was. He said his guess for this week's noisy is that we are hearing maintenance workers inside of a large windmill tower. And I think that's correct because somebody had to take the video. So we had two winners. Both great job, guys. Thanks for playing. And I got a new noisy for you guys if you're interested. Of course you're interested. [plays Noisy] What the heck is that, guys?

S: Sounds like when I pour ice down the disposal.

J: So if you think that you've heard this week's noisy or you heard something cool, if you think you've really, if you heard something cool and you haven't emailed me yet, record it and send me an email to WTN@theskepticsguide.org. Steve, it is the new year.

S: Yes.

J: And with the new year comes new things.

S: Sure.

J: So I present to you and the rest of the Rogues, NOTACON 2025.

S: Yep.

C: Yay.

J: We have a meeting on Tuesday and we're going to continue our work on writing all the bits and fine tuning the whole thing. So far, it's been a ton of fun for us, which means that if you come, you're going to have a great time. So Evan, I believe that all of the board game seats are gone.

E: Yes. We have a sold out event.

B: Oh, really? Already?

E: Yep, has been sold out.

S: Got to move fast.

E: It's going to be awesome.

J: And the VIP has been sold out as well.

C: Wow.

B: What?

J: Yeah, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't buy tickets and come to the conference yourself. So you must've heard me say this before on the show, so I'll keep it brief today. This is a conference about having a good time. This is a conference where all of us, all five Rogues, and then we have George Hrab, Andrea Jones-Roy and Brian Wecht. We will be spending our daytime hours trying to entertain you with lots of different fun things. Like last year or last time we did it, we had a live on the stage cooking show, which went over really well. We also have something called SG University, where each one of the Rogues and the other directors of the show will be teaching you something from their past.

S: We're going to do that again?

J: That's what everybody was saying, yeah.

S: Yeah, I think it was a ton of fun. Like that was the best bit that we did.

B: Yeah. Yeah, it was fun.

E: It was a lot of fun.

S: It was good. It turned out, I got to say, it turned out better than I thought it was going to turn out. It was, it was good. Everyone did a great job. I've been thinking about what I'm going to do this year.

J: Don't say it.

S: Don't say it, okay. I won't say it. I was about to say it, but that's fine.

C: The suspense.

J: So if you're interested in learning more about NOTACON or you'd like to buy tickets, you can go to notaconcon.com or you can go to theskepticsguide.org and there'll be a link on there for you to take a look. We are also planning out all of our live shows that are going to happen this coming year, guys, probably starting after May, I believe, but more details will come as soon as I start locking in dates and everything. And I am sick. Don't feel bad for me. I always get sick over Christmas because I'm surrounded by children.

S: And then Jay got me sick, which you could tell from listening to my voice.

E: Oh, yeah.

S: Yeah, all right. Thanks, Jay.

Emails (1:25:47)

S: Couple of quick emails. So a little addendum to the In Memoriam that we did on the last episode of last year. One is that I just forgot to include somebody on the list. A philosopher, Daniel Dennett, died in 2024.

E: Oh, it was 24.

S: We talked about it. I just forgot to list him at the In Memoriam at the end of the show. So I just forgot that one. And then, as is often the case, between us recording the show and the end of the year, sometimes notable people do die and they don't make it onto the list. So in this case, that person was President Jimmy Carter, who died, I think, the day after the show came out or something. So you guys remember Josh Carter, who's one of Jimmy Carter's grandchildren, who's a friend of the show. We met him during our 1,000th episode, right? And he came on briefly to talk about some of the work that he's doing. So I emailed him just to give my condolences. And he responded, because I said that your grandfather had quite a legacy. And his response was, Governor of Georgia, President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 100 years old, 101 Christmases, I guess he survived after Christmas, 77 years of marriage, four children, 12 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren. He spent his life fighting for America, democracy, global health, human rights, and peace. He told the truth and obeyed the law. So yeah, that's quite, not bad for a peanut farmer. That is quite the life work. Cracked 100, good for him.

J: I love that response. Yeah, I love it.

B: That is great. Damn, man, I feel pretty lame right now.

S: One other email, we had a few people respond to our, we had a kind of an off-the-cuff discussion in the end-of-the-year episode about a news item that we weren't covering, because we weren't covering new news items in the review show. This one was about the Commonwealth Fusion Systems announcing their plans to build a commercial fusion power plant in Virginia. Bob and I chatted about it a bit, and wasn't sure if we were gonna like take a second bite at that apple and just do a full report on it. But we figured, we'll just respond to the feedback in the emails. One is a, just a sort of a pedantic point. We said that they're going straight to a commercial fusion plant, but in fact, they are already building the Spark Reactor, which is the smallest possible arc reactor. That is their test reactor. But while that's happening, they are planning to build their arc reactor, which will be the first, their first and the first really commercial fusion power plant that will be ready to send energy to the grid. And that is, this is a Tokamak design, which is this is the only design that has any chance of producing net energy at this point in time.

B: It seems that way right now.

S: It's like orders of magnitude closer than anything else. So this is, this is it. So then we had, there was a lot of discussion about, like Bob is a little bit more optimistic. I'm still a little bit more pessimistic about, whether or not they're going to meet their projection of completing this, like getting net energy from a fusion reactor in the 2030s. And just as one thing I want to point out, so the question is, how close are they, right? So one point is definitely true that the newer material science, Cara, right? Material science has resulted in high temperature, superconductors, which allow for smaller, more powerful magnets. And that has been a game changer for the Tokamak design fusion reactors. It's the only thing that even makes this even a discussion, right? That, wow, this is even plausible. And how close have they gotten? They've gotten to like 60 or 70% of the way to break even. And so it sounds really close. But my point was, yeah, but remember one is break even, right? That's not producing net energy. How much more than that do you have to get before it's cost-effective? I think one, at least if not two orders of magnitude beyond that. First of all, the conversion of the energy is, I think optimistically it'd be like 30% efficient, like the energy to electricity using a turbine. That's like where our fission reactors are. So it'd be, the turbine design is going to be the same, just a different source of the heat, right? So probably going to be about 30% efficient. And so I would think that we would have to be at least be making 10 times more energy than it's consuming before the whole thing is going to be cost-effective. And saying that we're going to increase the energy output by an order of magnitude is huge. That is huge. And there's still lots of these engineering. You know, some people made the point, well, the physics all works. You're right. That's indisputable. The physics works. That's not the issue. The issue is the engineering. The question is, are we going to get the engineering to work? And these are non-trivial issues that need to be solved.

B: Applied science is a bitch.

S: It's a bitch. So I think my reading of everything is that, Bob, tell me if you disagree, like the 2035 timeline, that assumes everything goes perfectly well, which it rarely does. And it could easily get pushed back, can get pushed back to 2040, 2050, whatever, depending on how hard it really is to overcome these hurdles. And some of them may be indefinitely. There's so many, like when we're dealing at this level of cutting edge technology, it is more the rule than the exception that like we just don't overcome these engineering problems, you know. Or they take a lot longer than we think. So I still think we're in that phase, but it is certainly possible, I will admit, it is possible if everything goes perfectly well that we could have a working fusion reactor in the mid-2030s. So I hope that that's the case. I'm just-

B: Working and tied to the grid, you mean.

S: Yeah, tied to the grid, producing that energy. Producing energy.

B: Yeah.

S: Yeah.

B: I'm hoping before 2040. That's my-

S: Even that would be amazing.

B: 2039 would be nice.

S: Between 2040. But again, like with Artemis being pushed back, it's the same thing. If it's 2050 or 2060 if I'm still around, I won't be surprised, right?

B: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised either. Unfortunately, be crying.

S: Let's move on to science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:32:32)

Theme: None Item #1: Anguiculus dicaprioi, or DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake, was named after actor Leonardo DiCaprio who helped discover the new species while on safari. Item #2: A new species of clearwing moth, Carmenta brachyclados, was discovered in a living room in South Wales based on an amateur photograph posted on Instagram and then seen by an amateur lepidopterist. Item #3: Myloplus sauron is a new species of vegetarian piranha discovered in Brazil and named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Anguiculus dicaprioi, or DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake, was named after actor Leonardo DiCaprio who helped discover the new species while on safari.
Science	A new species of clearwing moth, Carmenta brachyclados, was discovered in a living room in South Wales based on an amateur photograph posted on Instagram and then seen by an amateur lepidopterist.
Science	Myloplus sauron is a new species of vegetarian piranha discovered in Brazil and named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings.

Host	Result
Steve	sweep

Rogue	Guess

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

S: Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake. We have a theme this week. The theme is new species discovered in 2024.

E: Oh, wait a minute.

S: I've done this before.

E: Talked about this.

S: Yes. All right, here we go. Item number one, Angioculus dicaprioi, or Dicaprio's Himalayan snake, was named after actor Leonardo Dicaprio, who helped discover the new species while on safari. Item number two, a new species of clear wing moth, Carmenta brachioclatos, was discovered in a living room in South Wales based on an amateur photograph posted on Instagram and then seen by an amateur lepidopterist. And item number three, Myloplus sauron, is a new species of vegetarian piranha discovered in Brazil and named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings. Evan, go first.

E: Okay, well, I won't even try to pronounce these things. It's hard enough when you know it, let alone you don't know it. But the Leo Dicaprio's snake, we'll call it, helped discover the new species while on safari. That could be true. I mean, but would you name it for Dicaprio? Helped discover, wouldn't it be someone else? I don't know. That seems a bit out there to me. Second one. Now, there's a clear wing moth discovered in a living room in South Wales. That's Australia, right? Based on an amateur.

S: New South Wales is Australia. South Wales is just South Wales and England.

E: Oh, Wales.

S: South Wales in the UK.

E: United Kingdom. Got it, okay. Well, we'll just leave it at that because that's correct. And it was based on an amateur photograph posted on Instagram and then seen by an amateur mothologist. So, that could be, seems more plausible than Leonardo Dicaprio's named discovery. The last one here about Sauron. Now, this one, this one's kind of funny in a way, but I also, I think of the three, this is probably the most true. A vegetarian piranha, which is nice to hear. It makes me feel good. And of course, named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings. You know, something that has had the history of the Lord of the Rings, I can definitely see names being taken from that and applied to new discoveries, definitely. The least plausible one of the three to this is the Leonardo Dicaprio one. That sounds made up, now that I think about it. I'll say that one's fiction.

S: Okay, Bob.

B: Let's see, I don't know. I could imagine Leonardo making a compelling argument to throw his name in there. I don't have too much of a problem with that one. And I just love the idea of an amateur lepidopterist finding an image on Instagram. I just love that. So I'm gonna go with that one, which leaves Sauron, a vegetarian piranha. It just doesn't, it doesn't sound right. Vegetarian piranha. And then, okay, even if it existed, would you name it after Sauron? I wouldn't. I think of something better than that. So I say that one's fiction.

S: All right, Jay.

J: Yeah, I'm gonna go with Bob. That's the one I'm leaning towards. I just don't think there's a vegetarian fricking piranha.

S: Okay, and Cara.

C: Can I ask about a hole in my knowledge? Like, who is Sauron?

S: Yeah, Sauron is the deceiver. He is the dark lord who rules over-

E: Lord of the Rings power.

B: Yeah, Lord of the Rings bad guy.

S: He is the main bad guy of Lord of the Rings.

C: Okay, so piranha. That kind of makes sense, I guess. Little teeth.

B: Vegetarian.

C: Yeah, I know it's vegetarian, but it's a deceiver. Who knows?

E: Oh, good point, Cara.

C: Right? I totally buy the species, the moth that was discovered based on a photograph. If you don't use iNaturalist, use it. It's super fun. There are so many, both professionals and amateur scientists and naturalists who use it. So if there's cool wildlife near you, take pictures, upload it. Somebody will help you identify it. It's really cool. I could see that happening. So it's between the other two. And I think I'm gonna go with Evan. And you know what is making my spidey senses tingle the most? Is the word safari. I don't know why it bugs me that it says that Leo helped discover this species on safari. And yes, technically safari is just a wildlife game drive. It's going out and seeing wildlife, whether you're hunting or taking photographs or whatever. But it's Swahili. And when we say safari, we're almost always talking about Africa. I don't think people talk about going on safari in the Himalayas. So I don't know why. That just bugs me. And I'm gonna call that one the fiction.

S: Okay. All right, so you all agree on the second one. So we'll start there. A new species of clear-winged moth, Carmenta brachyoclatus, was discovered in a living room in South Wales based on an amateur photograph posted on Instagram and then seen by an amateur lepidopterist. You guys all think this one is science. And this one is science. That actually happened. Now this clear-winged moth was an accidental, right? Somehow it's from South America. It found its way into Wales somehow. In this home, people have a lot of plants in their home. So the person saw, that's an interesting insect, took a picture of it, just an amateur nothing, right? Took a picture of it and uploaded it on Instagram and then this was a Daisy T. Cadet who got her name on the paper for doing that. And then this picture was seen by an amateur lepidopterist, so not a professional, but a knowledgeable amateur, a knowledgeable amateur, who said, that's interesting. I don't know what that is. Couldn't identify it. Turns out it's a newly identified species. Now there was actually a population of this clear-winged moth in the person's house. They were like laying eggs in their plants and there were dead ones on the windowsill, so they had lots of specimens. They didn't name this, they didn't present just this picture. They actually went and got physical specimens. But the picture's what led them to it. Yeah, so cool. It's a very interesting sequence of events. Amateur scientists, amateur naturalists actually identifying a new species. Okay, let's go back to number one. Angioculus dicaprioi, or Dicaprio's Himalayan snake, was named after actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who helped discover the new species while on safari. Evan and Cara, you think this one is the fiction. Bob and Jay, you think this one is science. I will tell you that Dicaprio's Himalayan snake is real and was a new species named in 2024. It's a small brown snake. It was named after Leonardo DiCaprio. It was absolutely, but not because he was on safari and he discovered it.

E: You got it, Cara.

S: Yeah, I threw in the safari thing. Because Leonardo DiCaprio is an activist, naturalist, right? He is spending his time and money fighting against climate change and the effect on the environment and species. So it was to honor his naturalist activities.

C: Oh, interesting.

S: Yeah, just to honor his work, not because he was part of the discovery itself.

E: So the safari was the fiction part.

S: That was the fiction, yeah. Which means that Mylopolis sauron is a new species of vegetarian piranha discovered in Brazil and named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings, is science.

B: Lame.

C: It's so funny that you called it a vegetarian.

S: It's a vegetarian piranha. That's what everything says.

C: This is a funny word for a fish.

E: Herbivore?

S: It eats water-based plants. It is a pacu. And so it was named after Sauron because it has this vertical black stripe behind its eye that looks like the pupil of Sauron's eye. So they named it after Sauron.

B: Was afraid that might be the case.

S: Yeah, so just because it just visually reminded them. And it's also kind of a round fish, you know what I mean? Looked at from the side, its profile is fairly circular. Yeah, and because scientists are nerds, so of course they named it after Sauron, right?

E: Yeah, right, when they leave it to the public, it would have been Chompy McChompface or something.

S: All right, good job Evan and Cara.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:42:12)

“Hope & curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. The unknown was always so attractive to me...and still is.”  – - Hedy Lamarr, (description of author)

S: Evan, give us a quote.

E: "Hope and curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. That's the way I was. The unknown was always so attractive to me, and still is." Hedy Lamarr. Remember Hedy Lamarr?

B: Yeah. Wi-Fi, baby.

E: Yeah, that's right. Glamorous Hollywood actress, but also a very talented inventor who made significant contributions to science and technology, the frequency hopping spread spectrum technology, specifically. Back in 1942, during World War II, wasn't adopted during the war, but it laid the foundation for modern wireless communications. This became a core technology used eventually in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and cellular networks. So we are still benefiting from her invention, her discovery, and yeah, definitely a, what, a superhero of science.

B: Yeah. So cool.

S: Thank you, Evan.

E: Thank you.

S: So guys, 2025 is off to a start with our first episode.

E: There we go, we've got predictions, we've got news, it's all happening.

S: This year we'll see the completion of our 20th anniversary, our 20th year.

J: That's correct.

E: Oh my gosh, we have to buy, what is it, clocks? We have to buy clocks for each other?

S: Something, we'll see.

E: Is that the anniversary gift? No, something.

S: Yeah, I don't know, we have, what's the 20th, you don't want the...

E: It is China.

S: China.

J: We're going to China?

E: A modern alternative is platinum. We have to get each other platinum. And Bob, a 23rd century anniversary alternative is gold-pressed latinum. So...

B: Ah, nice.

E: Threw that out for you, Star Trek folks.

B: Nice, but...

S: Gold-pressed latinum it is.

B: I think that means we need to go to Disney China this year then.

S: Yeah, it's probably not happening.

J: Well, happy New Year's everybody.

S: Yes.

C: Happy New Year.

S: Have a great New Year. To all of our listeners out there as well.

Signoff

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

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

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