SGU Episode 1007

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SGU Episode 1007
October 26th 2024
"Exploring the mysteries of the cosmos: a satellite's journey through space."
SGU 1006                      SGU 1008
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
"I can live with doubt and uncertainty. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong."
— Richard P. Feynman
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Show Notes
SGU Forum

Intro

Voiceover:You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

S:Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella, Hey everybody, Cara Santa Maria, Howdy, Jay Novella, Hey guys, and Evan Bernstein.

E:Good evening, folks.

S:How's everyone doing? Cara, happy belated birthday.

E:Thank you.

S:Would it be inappropriate for me to ask you how old you are?

C:No, not at all. I'm very public with my age. I had my 41st birthday, and I've been polling a lot of my friends about this. Forty was a nothing burger. 41 was the worst existential crisis.

US#08:What?

C:It's such a weird thing. It's like once you're in the decade. I think because we tell ourselves the year before, we're like amping ourselves, like, I'm going to be 40, I'm going to be 40, I'm ready to be 40, I'm going to be 40. But then like nobody's ready to be. And then after that, you're almost 50, and then you're almost 60. And that's just how it goes from there.

S:The only thing I experienced like that was when my older daughter went to college. This was the first kid going away to college, right? The first year, we drive her down there, she gets set up, she goes away, and that's it. And we dealt with it emotionally very well. The second year, leaving her at college, the second year was for some reason so much worse.

C:The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Cara Santa Maria,

E:So we psych ourselves up to a certain degree. I think so.

C:For something big. And then the next thing is just as big, but we don't expect it to be. It even feels bigger. But I will say, I had a great weekend. I had a lovely dinner. I spent time with a lot of friends. I hosted a poker game at my house, which was really fun. And then on Sunday, I went for the first time in 20 years. No, I did not. I went to my new church, which is adult gymnastics.

B:Oh, cool. Oh, wow.

C:I thought I was going to be well, I was really out of shape. I'm very sore still. We're recording this on a Wednesday and I'm in a lot of pain. But you're right. It's Tuesday. That makes me feel a little better. We usually record on Wednesdays.

B:Gymnastics at 41?

C:Yes, gymnastics at 41. I thought I wasn't going to be able to do anything. Like I told the coach at the beginning, I don't think I can do a cartwheel anymore. My legs are going to be bent. I'm probably going to pull my groin. Like I'm so out of shape. But not only did I do cartwheels, back walkovers, a round off back handspring, I mean with a spot, but it comes back.

B:Wow.

C:It's kind of amazing. I'm not in shape like I used to be. I don't have the upper body strength that I did.

B:Well, you're 41, Cara.

C:Yeah, but I actually think it might come back if I just keep doing this.

B:Why wouldn't it? Right? Absolutely. Exactly. Good for you. I remember in my early 40s doing my last handstand and thinking, I'm never doing that again.

C:But you can. You can. And that's the thing. The conditioning courses, the stretching courses that they offer, and then they have like beginner, immediate, and advanced gymnastics, all for adults. You know, a lot of people who are older, the way they stay in shape is they engage in sports or different things that are, I don't know, fun. Like you have to make your workouts fun. If they're not fun, you don't do it.

B:Oh yeah, you got to enjoy it.

C:And I've struggled with that a lot in my older years because looking back, the thing that was really fun for me Thank you for joining us today.

E:Wow, how to sell stolen goods?

S:Awesome. Over the weekend, my wife and I went to her birthday gift, which was a cooking class in New York City. This master chef told us all of his credentials. He taught us how to make fresh pasta with pesto sauce. It was awesome. But he was a character. This guy's Italian, Italian, speaks in a heavy accent. And he, of course, very appropriately snobby about Italian food versus American food. Because of course, those of us who have been to Italy, the food there is just amazing.

E:It's superior. It's superior. There's no question. Without question.

S:And so he's like, you know, it's like, you guys don't eat Parmesan cheese here. Like you have Parmesan. That's not real cheese. We have Parmigiano is the real cheese. And he's telling us all the differences between Parmesan, like from Wisconsin and Parmigiano from Italy, you know.

B:We would know that very well. Totally.

S:Jay and I got Jay a chunk of Parmigiano in Arthur Avenue in New York for his birthday, and we're still both eating it. I got myself a chunk, too. It's amazing. It blows away anything you can get in the store, of course. But he did say one thing that I'm like, okay, I've got to talk to this guy. He trashed GMOs. He's like, don't buy GMOs. Our food's better because blah, blah, blah, blah. We don't use GMOs. He threw that in there. So at the end of the lesson, I said, so what's your problem with GMOs? And he's like, do you ever taste like a tomato, like an Italian tomato versus an American tomato? So I'm thinking that was the perfect example for him to bring up. So I said, well, it turns out you've never eaten a GMO tomato because there are no GMO tomatoes on the market. And he was like, no, he was shocked. It was clear, without giving the blow to blow, it was clear that in his mind, GMO meant anything not completely natural. You know what I mean? He had no idea what it actually was. And I'm explaining to him, it's like, yes, because the tomatoes that are full of flavor are heirloom tomatoes that are bred for flavor. And the ones in the supermarket are cultivars that are bred for shelf appeal and durability and not for flavor. And so they are relatively flavorless compared to like heirloom. And they're also, if you're buying heirloom at a local farmer's market, it's going to be a lot fresher. It will not have ripened off the vine as much. But none of them are GMO. There's nothing to do with GMO. And he said, I believe you at the end, but I don't know if he's just getting rid of me. But right when you left, Steve, he went, oh, yeah, maybe he'll go home and Google it. I told you, I told him, I said, don't blame me. Look it up. But I do think there's probably a lot of that attitude out there where people like don't really know what GMO means. It's just a generic term for anything corporate or industrial or, you know, and not like from the farm to table. It's just it's just a vibe. It's not not a specific thing.

B:Well, it's like homeopathic items. It's similar. They didn't know what it really meant. They just thought it was... Herbs.

S:They thought it was herbalism.

C:Yeah, that it was just like alternative treatment. Or natural, yeah. Homeopathy is an actual thing. It's a specific thing.

S:It's witchcraft. And when you tell people who have no idea what it is, what it is, they've never believed me. I've never had somebody just straight up believe me when I explain to them for the first time what it is. Yeah, like it can't be that. That's crazy.

US#05:Yes, correct. That is crazy. You're right.

S:But it's interesting because I follow the literature on science communication very closely, as we all do here. But we talk about the knowledge deficit problem. A lot of topics are not a knowledge deficit problem. Denial of global warming is not a knowledge deficit problem. But being anti-GMO, it turns out, is primarily a knowledge deficit problem, that it is one of the, I think, pseudoscientific beliefs that can be corrected with information, because the people who have anti-GMO beliefs are misinformed. They just simply have incorrect beliefs about what a GMO is and how it's regulated and etc., etc.

E:Yeah, they've been sold a dialogue initiative.

S:They've been lied to. They've been straight up lied to by propaganda, and, like, transparently so, and it's easy to disprove.

B:Interesting, yeah. Not an uncommon phenomenon these days.

E:Sure, sure, and it's reinforced. There are echo chambers, and it gets out there, and people just accept it.

S:Mm-hmm. Interesting. So, yeah, I was at first a little surprised, like, oh, I get it now. He has no idea what GMOs are. He just thinks it's anything corporate. All right. But I got some got a lot of good advice from him on, like, how to get because he went over the whole I just was telling my wife about the fact that, like, most olive oil is fake, you know, because it is a huge, huge thing. And it got really got much worse during the pandemic because there was supply line issues, you know, and so Yeah, you have to get the DOP, which is a designation that says it's verified that it comes from where it says it comes from, and that it is what it is. For example, you could label something a product of Italy if you have an office in Italy, even if it's sourced elsewhere. So those regulations are very, very loose. But if it says DOP, then it has to fulfill all these specific criteria about it has to actually come from the place that it says it's from. And so, yeah, if you buy olive oil off the shelf in the grocery store, chances are it's not actually olive oil. You have to make sure that the brand that you're getting has been verified both for its location and that they're using actual olive oil.

E:So what you're actually just getting are vegetable oils?

S:There's cheaper vegetable oils.

C:But then why isn't it called vegetable oil?

S:Because olive oil markets better.

E:You could sell it. They allow for it to be called olive oil. You can charge more. Yeah, right.

S:But there are brands that you can trust. There are. You've got to find them. You can get real olive oil in the States. You've just got to know which brands are verified. Don't make any assumptions. And you may have to get them imported olive oil. And you're going to pay. It's going to be more expensive. It's the real deal. So at some point we'll make you, I'll make you guys, Joss and I, we'll make you guys some pesto sauce, like real pesto. It was super good. It's not that hard. You just need a shit ton of fresh basil. I'm running low on my parmesan, Steve. We've got to go get more. Yeah, we're going to have to get more. I just had it today. It was so good. God, it's so good. Parmesano, Jay. It's Parmesan. Bam, Parmesan. All right, Cara, you're going to start us off with the What's the Word?

C:Yeah, this word was recommended by Don from BC, from Kelowna. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right, British Columbia. He said, I'm a first time writer. I've been enjoying your show.

What's the Word? (11:52)

• Annular

C:I would like it if you would explore the etymology of the word annular. Obviously, annular means ring. Well, thanks for blowing it. Spoiler alert there, Don. But what about all the related words? And then he said annual, annuity, and yes, dare I say it, even anus. I'd like to know what the original root word was and how these are all related. So yeah, I did a little digging there for you. And you are correct, when we look at the etymology of the word annular, really it does go back to the Latin for ring. And guess what the Latin for ring is?

US#04:And you? And something?

C:Anus. Anus. I'm sure it's not pronounced anus. We're trying not to say it by anus. Anus. Anus. From the medieval Latin annularis, but that comes from annulus, which comes from annus, probably, which means ring. So the first time that it was used to mean ring-shaped looks like it was in the 1500s. As you dig into OED has like a good listing of early uses in textbooks. Well, actually, here's a description even older from 1560 geometrical practice. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by So this word, you know, she voided, this is a fun one, Philosophical Transactions, 1767, by R. Smith in the Royal Society, Volume 5692, in case you're interested. She voided a large annular worm. Do not want to know what was happening in that description.

US#06:I doubt it's like voiding a check.

C:1833, annular nebula exists but are among the rarest objects in the heavens. That was Herschel writing about astronomy. And then you see annular systems of Saturn, annular tables. So yes, all of these ring-shaped things, more and more descriptions in the literature. But let's dig a little bit deeper as was requested here by Don. Well, the word Anus, the inferior opening of the elementary canal, which was coined in the 1650s, also comes from that exact same root. And it's actually, if we go back even before the Latin anus, it is believed that the PIE, right, the Proto-Indo-European root is ano meaning ring, so called. We, of course, know about the annular eclipse, which is an eclipse in which you do have to wear your vision protection the entire time, because that ring is quite visible and quite bright and can injure your eyes. But how about another question here, one that I came with myself, because I was like, okay, thinking about astronomy, Thinking about these different terms, and of course, thinking, I think last week, we got a lot of feedback on was it Janus? Janus? Do you guys remember all these emails about the god? Right? Right. So I was like, okay, what about Uranus, which is like the modern way that that astronomers pronounce Uranus because they don't want little kids to laugh in the audience. What about Uranus? Where did that name come from? Is it derived from, I mean, the second half of the word is anus, right, from annular. And the more that I dug, the less sure I am that that root is even a part of it. Because it seems to have come from the proto-Greek word, Versanos, because the Greek god of the sky, Oronos, which eventually became Uranus, and that was what the planet was named for, the ancient Greek deity of the sky, The root of oranos was versinos, which is apparently derived from the PIE ers, which means to rain or to moisten. So I think this is an example of a sort of convergent evolution where they look the same, but they came from two different roots.

E:Is that when the V and the U were kind of interchangeable in language?

C:I mean, and of course, which language, right? But so it is interesting that some of these words which appear to come from similar roots might come from completely different roots. But then we can come up with a, what would you call it, like anachronistic description for why they are what they are. So Uranus apparently has nothing to do with your anus, sadly, that ring of flesh.

US#05:Might be a relief to others.

C:But when we think about all of the different examples of words like annuity, or annual, or things like that, they are we are coming back to this idea of the year, the year going around. And that does seem to have, you know, some sort of circular root there, a ring-like root. So yeah, very interesting word and used in a lot of different fields, right? Like Steve, do you ever talk about, I mean, I know you're not a dermatologist, but annular, I've seen a lot of reference to sort of like annular markings. Totally. Very common in medicine, very common in lots of different things.

US#06:Do you like when you have a parasite and like a ring appears on your skin? Like ringworm?

C:Ringworm.

US#06:Yeah, ringworm.

C:But ringworm's not a parasite, right? It's a fungus? It's a fungus. It's a fungi. Yeah, you would definitely call that an annular rash.

J:Alright, thanks Cara.

News Item #1 - Europa Clipper (17:52)

• The Clipper Europa Mission - NeuroLogica Blog 

J:Jay, tell us about this recent launch of the Europa Clipper mission. NASA's Europa Clipper mission, this launched on October 14th, not too long ago, and this is very significant. This is a huge step in the search for life beyond Earth. So there's a lot of excitement about SpaceX and there's been lots of really cool space-related stuff this year, but this one, I think this is the biggest news possibly of this year that we're going to hear about. So if it goes well, Clipper will arrive at Jupiter in 2030. It's not that long from now before you know it, you know, and once it's there, it's going to begin its mission to explore Europa, which is one of the most likely places in our solar system to harbor life. So Europa, it isn't just an icy moon. I know you've seen T-shirts, you know, it's like, you know, it's like it's like a snow cone. Yeah, scientists believe it hides, you know, it has a ton of ocean water beneath the frozen crust. We've known about this for a long time. And what we think is possibly under that crust, not only is there twice as much water as Earth's oceans combined, but there probably, probably is all the makings to have life beyond that planet. The planet has a rocky core, it generates a lot of internal heat through all these tidal forces, and there's a lot of pumping of minerals into the ocean. You know, there's a lot of similarities here. So life on Earth, as you know, it can survive in extreme environments. So we know that bacteria like chemosynthetic organisms, you know, they can live near of these volcanic vents and all that stuff. There's a lot of evidence to show that there could be life there. So Europa's hidden ocean is Absolutely could host similar forms of life and it does not need sunlight. So this is all adding to the reason why NASA decided to do this because there seems to be very, very good conditions there to host life. Clipper isn't taking a direct route to Jupiter. Of course not. Why would it go straight there?

E:Get there quick. If it went straight it would miss.

J:I gotta tell people, Bob, because they don't know everything you know.

E:You know what I mean?

J:The spacecraft has to fly by Mars. It gets a gravity boost. Boom! Like that, you know? It swings back around at Earth. It grabs another assist, and it finally makes its way to Jupiter, and it takes years, right? And once there, it'll orbit Jupiter, and then it will conduct 49 close flybys of Europa over the course of four years. They think it might come within 16 miles of the moon's surface. That's freaking intense. That is intense. That is so freaking close. So close. All the cameras are working. So close.

C:How close is it?

J:I'm going to tell you, Cara, thank you, my God, the only one, that it could actually fly through some of the ejecta that, you know, from the, you know, what would you call those, like the hot springs that shoot?

C:Yeah, like the plumes.

J:The plumes, yeah. And, you know, imagine that. It goes through one of those plumes and it's going to be able to really analyze what's in those plumes. And it was specifically designed to study Europa's magnetic field, its gravity, its ice shell, and its ocean composition. And, you know, what makes this mission really exciting, though, is its ability to sample material, like I said, directly from Europa's surface and plumes. This is a big freaking deal. Those geysers, you know, they shoot up water vapor. It's erupting all the time. And if Clipper can fly through one of those plumes, man, it's going to gather key data on the organic molecules that we expect to find there. And that will tell us just how habitable Europa's oceans might be. So the Clipper missions won't directly search for life, right? They're not going to like specifically be looking for life. They're just going to be looking, you know, around the edges pretty much. Instead, they're going to try to determine whether Europa has the conditions, like I said, and if Clipper does detect organic compounds, or there's any other evidence of possible life there, it will justify future missions, which means the money will suddenly become available. And they're also talking about maybe a lander to explore the moon's surface, which would be incredible. A lander mission would be a very long way off, though. I mean, probably the 2040s. But this is how it works. You know, we're not churning out these missions because the money is not there. And, you know, it takes a lot of effort to get billions of dollars to go to something that might not find anything. You know what I mean? So we need more proof and we're hoping that this this mission will get enough data to say, hey, you know what? We need a lander, which would be amazing. Hey, do you guys know, like, could we potentially put boots on the ground there or is it just too far away?

C:You mean people? There are people at NASA who really want this to happen, but they are not hopeful.

J:Too far away the radiation's heinous.

C:Wait, you mean people's boots? I didn't even know you were asking that. I think even the lander itself is not fully in the cards yet.

J:We would know it isn't absolutely not. They need they need more evidence to get the funding for that. But the first several probes that we would send there would be uncrewed, I'm sure. Right. You know, we're not we're not planning on sending people there. But is that even in the cards? Like, you know, I know, Bob, you're saying that the radiation is horrible.

B:Yeah, it's it's too far. And even if you get there, the radiation is nasty. I mean, the biggest challenge as we know, I mean, we can't even go to Mars now because, you know, it's just too far. Also, what's the point? Just the galactic, I mean, just the radiation from the sun and the cosmic rays are just like, that's a deal killer right there. No matter, even, you know, for whatever reason, even they were just going to orbit Jupiter.

J:Yeah, I agree.

B:It's not going to happen.

J:It's not going to happen for quite a while. I agree.

S:The electronics in the clipper have to be shielded just for that to function. Definitely.

J:Yeah, you're right, Steve. So what's cool, they have these massive solar arrays, like these 100 feet wide solar arrays that are the largest that NASA will ever deploy. To date, and they're designed to generate 700 watts of power. But why is this significant? Because Jupiter receives only 3 to 4% of the sunlight that reaches the Earth, right? It's so far away that the sunlight intensity dramatically drops.

S:So if you had a solar panel at Jupiter, it would be getting 3 or 4% of the energy that the same solar panel would be getting in orbit around Earth.

J:Yep, absolutely. So they got to make these giant ones to give it enough power, but they can do it. We have the technology. So I'm excited. You know, I mean, to me, there's never enough of these missions. I just want us to be doing this, you know, multiple times a year and really explore our solar system. So I, you know, I'll be alive when this one lands. We'll see what happens.

C:So Jay, I wanted to share that last week a friend was in town and randomly stayed with me because she was meant to be at the launch of Europa Clipper. But I don't know if you guys remember, there is a pretty horrific hurricane happening at the exact same time. And it was a really tense day because Clipper had already been put in position and they had to pull it back and keep it. It was in a hangar. It was just surrounded by thin metal in the middle of a hurricane, and it was so lucky that this complex machine, which had years and years of science and engineering loaded onto it, was just waiting for this hurricane to blow over. It could have been destroyed. Yep. It was a very scary day.

S:Yeah, it did well though.

C:Yeah, thank goodness.

S:Jay, do you know how gravity assists work? Like basic physics of a gravity assist?

J:Absolutely.

C:Yeah, he told us it was like, choo!

J:Yeah, like basically you loop it around and it picks up speed as it goes through the gravitational field of whatever the body that they're using for the boost and then it shoots it around on the flip side, you know?

S:Yeah, so that's that's the effect. But that's yeah, Bob is like, is it having the same reaction? I think there's a level deeper. I'm sure there's actually even levels deeper still. But basically, where's that extra momentum that the satellite picks up coming from this whatever the planet it's coming from the planet body. Of course it is. And but not just that, but think about it this way. So essentially, the probe will pick will will add the velocity of the planet around the sun to its velocity.

C:Once it's within that kind of gravitational range, depending on how it swings around.

S:You can swing it around so that it leaves the planet going away from the direction the planet's moving around the sun, and then it will slow down. It'll subtract.

B:Think about it. If you go towards the planet, the gravity's going to pull you in and save you some energy, right? But then, as you're moving away from the planet, it's going to pull you back, so it's kind of like a wash. So it's more complicated than just The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Cara Santa Maria,

S:That relative velocity is going to be adding the velocity of the planet around the sun. So it's speeding up relative to the sun, not relative to the planet. Does that make sense?

B:Very good, yes.

S:But that's why if you go in the opposite direction, you're slowing down relative to the sun. So yeah, it's a little bit more interesting.

E:Yeah, it is.

S:Yeah, so you could speed up or slow down. It's all about the trajectory. Yeah, like I said.

E:Does that mean you can't use the sun to get a boost?

S:Right. I guess you can use the Sun to get a boost in your velocity around the galaxy, right? It has to be relative to something that it's orbiting, but not in the solar system.

E:Right.

B:That gets you nowhere. Yeah, and another angle to this that makes it interesting is when I was getting upset about how long it's going to take to get there, it's mainly because rocket fuel is It's expensive and relatively inefficient, the whole rocket equation thing. So in order to maximize cargo and minimize fuel, they do a Hohmann orbital transfer. So basically, they try to find the balance between how much cargo you can carry and how much fuel you need. So it takes a long time. It's efficient, but it takes forever to get there. Crazy, you know, crazy, you know, real like nuclear rockets, like a torch ship. Yeah. Then you could do a, I think it's called a brachidostome orbit. And then you could just basically basically go there to you go to where it's going to be when you're going to get there. And you could and if it's if it's actually fast enough, you could you could accelerate to the midpoint, turn around and then decelerate. But that's just like, you know, crazy. You know, that's about what chemical rocketry No way, not with chemical rock. You need to accelerate for days or weeks, which may never be really possible. But there are some designs for nuclear rockets that might make a torch ship feasible, but we'll have to see. But it's fascinating to get into some of those layers.

S:Yeah. All right. Thank you, Jay, and thanks for that additional info, Bob.

News Item #2 - Illusion of Information Adequacy (29:36)

• Confidently Wrong - NeuroLogica Blog 

S:So, guys, I'm going to talk to you about a new cognitive bias.

C:All right, talk to me.

S:What do you want?

C:You mean newly named?

S:Well, I don't know. I think there is a new name involved here. It's not something that we have talked about. You want me to tell you the name and then I'll describe it to you, or you want to guess?

E:OK.

S:All right, so the name is the Illusion of Information Adequacy. Pretty self-explanatory.

E:Sounds a little Dunning-Kruger-y.

S:It is a little Dunning-Krugery, it is. So what the research was, the study that demonstrated this phenomenon, what it did was they gave three groups of people, the study subjects, they broke them up into three groups, And they presented them information about a controversial topic. And then to group A, they gave them only one side of the information. In group B, they gave them only the other side of the information. And in group C, they gave them both sides of the information. So in each group, you know, they asked the subjects, like, what position do you take? And they also asked, do you need any more information? Do you feel like you have all the information that there is?

E:That should always be no. Did anybody say yes to that? Right. How is that not always no?

S:So, you know, the majority of people in all three groups said that they had enough information and that they had all the relevant information that there was. Now, the third group actually did have all the information, but that doesn't mean that they were unbiased because they just, you know, they assumed they had all the information. It happened to be correct, but the other two assumed they had all the information and they didn't. They only had half of the information. So that's the illusion of information adequacy. They also asked the people, how do you think other people will feel about this issue? And they assumed everybody would agree with them, right? Because, of course, if you think you have all the information and it's all pointing into in one direction, then, of course, other people should come to the same conclusion, of course. There was one difference between the group that had the two sides of the information and the two groups that had only one side of the information. What do you think that was?

C:One difference between, sorry, the groups that had both sides and just one side?

S:The one group that had both sides was different in one important way from the two groups that only had half of the information.

B:They were different, inherently different?

S:No, no, their reaction to the information was different.

C:It was more measured, it was more waffling.

S:It was more measured and therefore it was less confident. So the people who had half the information were more confident in their opinion. The people who had the full information were less confident.

B:It's like an inverse. It seems simpler to them. It sounds like a scientist versus a layman.

S:Exactly. Yeah, so the people who had all the information, they're getting both sides. It's complicated. There's some information going in one direction, some information going in the other direction. They still may have favored one side or the other.

C:But they were grappling with uncertainty.

S:They were grappling with uncertainty. The people who had half the information were like, I know everything I need to know. This is simple. I'm very confident in my answer, and everybody will agree with me. That was basically how they reacted to having half the information.

C:Of course. It makes perfect sense.

S:So it does intuitively feel so correct based upon our anecdotal experience with echo chambers and social media and just people out there in the world. It does seem that this is probably a very common cognitive bias, the illusion of information adequacy. And so this is sometimes we express this as, you know, people consume information as a narrative or information is communicated as a narrative. Right. And so people adopt a narrative, a story about a situation. And that story is how they organize and filter and think about information. They don't think about facts. Here are the facts. They think about, here's the story. Does that make sense? So here, if people are given just one narrative, one side of the information, that narrative is sort of internally consistent and complete, and it tells a consistent story, we find that very compelling. That's more compelling than, here's a bunch of facts, some of which point in one direction, some of which point in another direction. Which is why you should be very suspicious when you are handed a nice clean narrative, or any narrative, or any package of information. And we've discussed this before, but then this sort of puts it into a good cognitive bias kind of framework. You should always ask, this is just critical thinking 101, well, do I have all the information? What does the other side say? Who disagrees with this? Why do they disagree with it? What's the full story here? You have to assume you're missing information, because that is almost always going to be correct. You're probably always missing important information. So that's, I think, the difference between, you know, metacognition and not engaging in metacognition, right? Critical thinking and just going with the flow, you know, cognitively speaking, psychologically speaking. You hear a narrative, the narrative is compelling. You believe it, that's the narrative. As opposed to, wait a minute, is this the whole picture? Who disagrees with this? You know, how could this be wrong? That's a metacognitive sort of critical thinking approach to hearing it. Now, we encounter this ourselves, and we've encountered it in people that we talk with. So I've noticed, for example, that when someone, for example, reads a book or watches a documentary, they're often getting a narrative, right? There is a or reads an article, right? That article has a narrative that The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe It's all bullshit. It's all evolutionary just-so stories. It's all nonsense. It's completely evidence-free. It's just somebody completely riffing. But if you only bring up all of the points that seem to point in that direction without bringing up any of the counterpoints or the pieces of information that cut against that theory, It could seem superficially very compelling, especially if you're not an evolutionary scientist or somebody who's very familiar with it. Or if you've never read a critique of it, you just read the aquatic, like, this is it, man. There's so much evidence. There's so many points in this favor. It's like, yeah, because you're reading one side of the story. You're just reading. Or people who watch Jay, like when you first watched Loose Change, the 9-11 conspiracy movie, it's a documentary telling a narrative that's all in one direction. So it could seem like, well, something's got to be going on here. This is like there's too much all pointing towards this one narrative. It's a good example of how, in and of itself, that doesn't mean anything. In fact, that should make you more suspicious. If you're not hearing conflicting information, it's not because it doesn't exist. It's because it's not part of the narrative that was packaged and that's being handed to you. This also, in my opinion, explains why, as of recording this, we're exactly two weeks out from an election in the United States, and whatever side of the political spectrum you're on, we're all sort of experiencing this. How can the other side believe what they do? Both sides think that the other side is destroying the country. There's incredible divisiveness. It's because, at first approximation, most people have half the story and think they have this illusion of information adequacy. This is not a false equivalency. I'm not saying that they're both equal. I'm just saying that that is a good explanation for why there could be such a fantastical disconnect, that both sides think, how could the other side believe what they do?

C:Right, like that's not the explanation for what is for the content, right? It's an explanation for why this election as opposed to the last as opposed to last, that there's been almost, I mean, I think over my lifetime, at least, a systematic widening of the gap between the two parties.

S:If you've been following the horse race, which I try not to, but I can't help myself, the pundits are all marveling at how this election, nothing seems to matter. Nothing matters. It doesn't matter who says what. It doesn't matter who wins the debate. Nothing moves the needle. So just defying all political logic and all history because, yeah, nothing's moving.

C:This is just doubling down on exactly what you said, that narrative.

S:Yeah, people have already taken their sides, and then no information can alter the narrative that people have already sorted themselves into, except for that little sliver of undecideds.

C:That's what I was going to say. It's why we're so flabbergasted by the concept of an undecided voter in this go around. Like, I feel like there have been elections in my history where I was like, these are interesting. These undecided voters, they're bringing up interesting moderate views. And I feel this way about this and that way about that. But now I'm like, who are these people? I want to study them.

E:Yeah. Undecided is also another way of saying unspoken or not declaring, right? They're keeping it to themselves.

S:Possibly, but I did read a good article about it, though, that interviewing people who were quote unquote undecided. And their conclusion was a lot of these people They believe something on each side.

C:I don't know what you would even call it, like a vacillation with undecided voters, like they feel extremely about this one thing, and then extremely differently about this other thing. And that fascinates me.

S:I think that it might be the undecided voters have not resolved their cognitive dissonance. Thank you for joining us today. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Yeah, it is fascinating. If it wasn't going to determine the future of the world, and I was just looking at this as an academic sort of interest, it would be fascinating. We'll see. We'll see what happens in two weeks. We shall see. All right.

News Item #3 - Seeding the Atmosphere (41:36)

• Could injecting diamond dust into the atmosphere help cool the planet? 

S:Bob, tell us about seeding the atmosphere.

B:OK, so you've got a group of climatologists, meteorologists, and Earth scientists. But wait, what do you call them? You can't just call them a group.

E:What would you call a group of climatologists?

C:Climatologists?

E:Oh, a climate scientist? A gathering. A degree. A gathering storm.

B:Now, I'll come up with just a random name. A hockey stick of climatologists, meteorologists, and earth scientists recently have shown that according to their model, diamond dust in the atmosphere would be an effective way to rapidly cool the planet. So how and why did they determine that? And how expensive could all that diamond dust possibly be? All right, so this is from the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The name of the study is Microphysical Interactions Determine the Effectiveness of Solar Radiation Modification via Stratospheric Solid Particle Injection. Nice read, that study. So, geo-art engineering, or more specifically climate engineering, is the deliberate large-scale attempt to modify Earth's natural systems to combat climate change. Okay, you've heard of geo-engineering before, but climate engineering is a specific type of geo-engineering. So these types of planet-wide changes are, of course, they're pretty scary, both financially and existentially, since if something goes wrong when you're trying to do some geoengineering, it could go wrong in a really, really big way, right? So it should be not done lightly, obviously. Some scientists claim, though, that dramatic climate engineering is becoming increasingly imperative, Especially when you consider that some recent research claims that we are near or at a tipping point in our climate. Steve, have you come across any any of this research that talks about this tipping point and how close we are?

S:Oh, yeah.

B:Yeah. Because, I mean, we don't know exactly where that tipping point is. No. But let me let me discuss what that is. Now, not much scares me, but climate tipping points absolutely do. According to the IPCC, which stands for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they describe tipping points as critical thresholds in a system that, when exceeded, can lead to a significant change in the state of the system, often with an understanding that the change is irreversible. So what would happen then is that you'd have these small changes in some of the elements in our climate, and they would create what they call a reinforcing loop Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for joining us today. So, to avert that, what we need, according to them, is not a decrease of warming, but a rapid cooling of the atmosphere. And one of the best ways to accomplish that is with solar geoengineering technique called SAI, Stratospheric Aerosol Injection. So we know that injecting an aerosol into the stratosphere, doing that with planes, we know that it will cool the earth, mainly because volcanoes do it all the time, right? That's exactly what they do. They're throwing these aerosols into the into the stratosphere and you can measure the cooling that's happening. So we know that that works. So that's actually a kind of a big bonus. To watch natural geoengineering and learning from that. So now an aerosol, it's just really, an aerosol is simple. It's just a tiny solid or liquid particles that are suspended in the air. It doesn't refer to the particles themselves because the air is an integral part of what an aerosol is. It could be air, it could be some other gases required as well for an aerosol, to be an aerosol. A fog is an aerosol. I didn't know that, but yeah. So smoke is an aerosol and other particulate pollutants in the atmosphere. These are aerosols as well. Perfume from an atomizer, that's an aerosol too. So now the stratospheric part of stratospheric aerosol injection is also critical. The stratosphere is the second layer of the Earth's atmosphere up, going up from the Earth. Humans live in the lowest troposphere and all our weather happens right here in the troposphere. Not much weather going on anywhere else, actually. The stratosphere doesn't have things like rain then. And that means that if you put aerosols up there, they will tend to linger for far longer periods of time than they would in the troposphere where we are. So what are they doing when they're hanging out in the stratosphere? What's going on? Aerosols can increase the albedo or coefficient of reflectivity. So a white planet has a very high albedo, a dark planet has a very low albedo. It's just how much light is being reflected back. The more we reflect the sun's rays, the more quickly Earth will cool and hopefully not only help with our global warming, but also prevent the potentially catastrophic tipping over event into a new stable climate, which of course, I mean, almost certainly would be inimical not only to our civilization, but our The surface biosphere as we know it as well, it would not be a good thing. No scientists are saying, yeah, if we tip over to a new stable climate, it'll be better. Nobody's actually saying that, even though pretty nebulous what that new stable climate would be. Now, the most commonly discussed aerosol in this context is usually sulfur dioxide. If you read about this, you'll see there's lots of talk about sulfur dioxide. We're very familiar with how that has cooled the Earth, like I said, in the past due to volcanic activity. Unfortunately, there's some downsides to sulfur dioxide. It causes acid rain all over, not good, and they also think that it might disrupt the ozone layer and impact normal weather patterns. So yeah, Sulfur dioxide has some baggage for sure. So to find a better aerosol, these researchers created a model, a 3D virtual climate model that shows the interaction of a given aerosol with the atmosphere. And apparently, from what I've read, it's a pretty, pretty cool model, so to speak, it calculates how the different aerosols would reflect light after they're injected into the atmosphere, reflect light and heat, how they would each eventually settle to the ground, because even if you throw them into the stratosphere, eventually, they're probably going to come down. So the model calculates how long that would take and what that would be like. It also calculates whether the particulates would clump together. That's really important. You do not want your aerosol particulate matter clumping together. That's called coagulation and that's bad because it causes warming by trapping heat. That's the last thing you want with this. So the researchers tested seven aerosol candidates with this model, calcite, diamond, aluminum, silicon carbide, anatase, rutile, and sulfur dioxide. The model showed that over 45 simulated years, the best candidate would be synthetic diamond dust because that reflects more than all the other substances tested. Also, the diamond dust is pretty good in that it stayed aloft in the stratosphere for a decent amount of time, and it wasn't likely to clump, which is also pretty big. They also noted that since diamond is chemically inert, we probably won't experience anything like acid rain from the diamond dust as well. So the bottom line suggestion from the model was that if we injected 5 million tons of synthetic diamond dust into the atmosphere each year, it would cool the Earth by 1.6 Celsius in 45 years. Yep, that's a long time, but that's a dramatic cooling and that's basically how much we have warmed ourselves at this point. It would kind of take us back to where we were quite a while ago. What do you think that the estimated cost was for all 40 some odd years?

S:$10 trillion.

B:Times 20. $200 trillion?

US#06:$200 trillion. Oh gosh, we'll have to fill out an application for a loan.

B:So, I mean, about $200 trillion over 45 years or so. That's still real money. It depends. It's still, yeah.

US#06:Yeah.

B:Yeah, it's a lot of money.

C:Yeah, but what's the cost if we don't?

US#06:At what cost?

B:Well, that's it. Part of the problem is if this tipping point's a thing and it happens, we won't know quite what the cost will be until it happens. We're like, oh boy, this is even worse than I thought it would be. But either way, it's got to be dealt with and we're clearly heading to a bad place. Even if there is no tipping point, it's going to just get hotter and hotter. So, all right, let me finish up here. So will this research continue? I don't know, maybe, probably, but it might not make a difference as to what kind of aerosol is used if they do decide to do some sort of geoengineering here, at least according to Douglas McMartin. I got an interesting quote from him. He's an engineer at Cornell University. He said, I do think that it's interesting to explore these other materials, but if you ask me today what's going to get deployed, it's going to be sulfate. What I gather from that is that even this research won't sway the people that are going to invest the money to try this stratospheric aerosol injection, that he thinks that they would probably stick with the sulfate and probably because we know so much more about how sulfate reacts with a large-scale deployment because of volcanoes. There's a lot of data gathered there and I think that's the one that's, according to this guy, he thinks that they're going to stick with that because, you know, better the devil you know, I guess. So who knows? But it was an interesting read. I recommend checking it out online and cross your fingers.

S:Yeah, not for that kind of money. It's never going to happen.

B:Yeah, no, no, no.

S:All right, thanks, Bob. All right, Evan, this segment I titled, That's No ExoMoon.

E:Nice, nice. Well titled, Steve, well titled. I have a couple of questions for you to see. I'm going to test your memory a little bit. Do you remember? When the first exoplanet was discovered, how many exoplanets have been confirmed

S:We'll see you next time.

E:It's about 8,700, roughly 8,700. So now here's the question we're going to get to where Steve brought this in, the exomoon. How many exomoons have been detected and confirmed?

S:I think confirmed, just the one you're going to talk about tonight. I remember reading about one, like a year ago, a possible exomoon. I don't know, so it's probably- It's zero.

E:Yeah, it's zero. Zero confirmed, yeah. Thank you for watching. Now, also, there are other things. The signals produced by an exomoon, that can easily be masked by the much stronger signals from either the planet or its star, and you can't really detect the gravitational influence that it has. It's way too subtle. There's also orbital complexity issues, because the motions of exomoons, that's more complex than actually the exoplanets, which is more predictable. So that feeds into this as well. And this is with the most sophisticated equipment we have. James Webb Telescope, the TASS, the Kepler Space Telescope, HARPS, the Very Large Telescope, the GPI, the Gemini Planet Imager. Those are our chief, chief instruments looking at these things. Can't find The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by

News Item #4 - Exomoon (54:50)

• Possible Volcanic Moon Detected 635 Light-Years Away 

E:This is the news. Astronomers have apparently discovered evidence of an exomoon orbiting the planet WASP-49b, which is a gas giant exoplanet that orbits a yellow dwarf star known as, what, WASP-49, right? But it's only about 635 light years from Earth. Relatively close. Almost in our backyard. The exomoon candidate of WASP-49b is very intriguing because it might be volcanic, and volcanic in a similar way of one of the moons in our own solar system, Jupiter's moon Io, which is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. And you know why Io is volcanically active?

B:Because of the tidal forces from Jupiter. Tidal forces from the Jupiter.

E:Yes, that's right. Yep. Cause the interior of Io to flex and contract, creating dense lava flows that break through the surface. So it spews lava into space with sulfur dioxide, sodium, potassium, other gases creating a massive cloud around Jupiter up to a thousand times the planet's radius. That's active. So what were the astronomers able to find out about WASP-49b? They were able to detect a massive sodium cloud near the planet. The cloud exhibits behaviors and characteristics akin to those formed by volcanic activity, such as the emissions we've witnessed from Io. So they used that information to say, hey, this could be happening here as well. The scientists were able to determine that the sodium cloud was not consistent with being produced by the planet or the planet's star. So what that did was open the possibility of another body, possibly a moon, being the source. The sodium cloud appeared to move independently of the planet, suggesting a distant object orbiting WASP-49b This study was led by Apruva Oza, former postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He's now a staff scientist at Caltech. He had colleagues from NASA JPL and researchers from ESO, which is the European Southern Observatory, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Caltech, IPAC, NASA, Exoplanet Science Institute, the Institute of Science Technology, Austria, and there's even even more. It's a long list of people who kind of contributed to all this and their paper detailed. The paper was recently published in the Astrophysical Letters. They use the Echel Spectrograph for rocky planets and stable spectroscopic observations. That's espresso as a, you know, E-S-P-R-E-S-S-O. Along with the VLT, which I mentioned, the Very Large Telescope. Those were the instruments that they were able to use to detect this particular cloud. They estimate the cloud is replenished at a rate of 120,000 pounds of cloud debris per second. So this thing is being replenished. They had multiple observations of this because the cloud would suddenly increase in size. They also discovered that the cloud was moving faster than the planet, and that also suggests it's being generated by another body, which orbits faster than the planet. We think this is a really critical piece of evidence, said Oza. The cloud is moving in the opposite direction that physics tell us it should be going if it were part of the planet's atmosphere. Their observations also noted something interesting about WASP-49b that orbits its parent star every 2.8 days. During that time, the cloud appeared and disappeared behind the star or the planet irregularly. So a lot of evidence here pointing towards volcanic activity on a moon around WASP-49b. Perhaps, perhaps they still need more information. Perhaps this will become the first confirmation of an exomoon, finally.

S:That'd be cool. That'd be cool. Yeah.

E:Yep.

S:All right. Thanks, Evan.

E:You got it.

News Item #5 - Psychology of Scare (58:55)

• Some people love to scare themselves in an already scary world − here’s the psychology of why 

S:Cara, you got a special Halloween themed news item for us. You're going to tell us about the psychology of being scared.

C:This one's for Bob. Bob knows all about it. Bob already knows all the answers. Bob, this is a quiz for you. No. This is just a post that was written by Sarah Collett on the conversation. And it's really about, you know, why do people who—she actually wrote it in a—I'm just going to quote her because I think she said it better than any of us could. To some people, the preoccupation with horror can seem pretty tone deaf. School shootings, child abuse, war, the list of real life horrors is endless. So why seek manufactured fear for entertainment when the world offers real terror in such large quantities? Well, and then she said, as a developmental psychologist who writes dark thrillers on the side, I find the intersection of psychology and fear intriguing. And then she goes on to talk about some of the Some of her research and some of the research that she's come across that may help explain why we enjoy putting ourselves in situations that are scary. So I'm curious before I even dive into her slicing and dicing and categorization of the answer to that question. What are some of the reasons that you all think that it's fun to be scared?

B:Excitement with limited risk. This is an aphorism in the museum park industry and stuff. Fear minus death equals fun.

C:Okay, but why does fear minus death equal fun?

S:I mean, it could be, I always assumed it was for the same reason that we like to play games, to simulate combat. It's like we're simulating stressful situations so that we are able to handle them better in real, in real life. That would be like the evolutionary explanation. And when you do get stressed out and then there isn't the death, you know, there isn't something bad doesn't actually happen. You have all this energy that you have to release and evolutionarily we release that energy as humor or a positive emotion.

C:Hmm, interesting.

B:Yeah, the brain chemicals.

C:The brain juices. So interestingly, she does really touch on the former that you mentioned, Steve, but less so on the latter, but there's maybe like a twist on that. And so it's funny because that's one of the points that she makes later in her article, an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure. And the way that she brought that up was to talk about Thank you so much for joining us today. The idea here is that watching these threats play out in a controlled way, in a manageable way, maybe would help us prepare for our own experience. And so there's actually a lab in Denmark, It's called the Recreational Fear Lab, where researchers study recreational fear. And they found, and they published it in 2021, pandemic practice, horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic. So they found a few things that people who historically self-identified as horror fans, people who watched horror films for fun, when tested also self-reported less psychological distress during the pandemic. They also found that people who both enjoyed horror films and enjoyed the prepper genre, so kind of like zombie apocalypse films and things of that nature, they were less psychologically distressed and more prepared for the pandemic. And they also identified a trait that they called morbidly curious people, and they developed a scale for testing it. And they found that those who were morbidly curious had greater resilience during the pandemic. And also then it became this feedback loop because people who were morbidly curious were also more interested in watching films about pandemics during the pandemic. But that very much, I think, I fall into that category for sure. I think I am a morbidly curious individual. But that speaks exactly to what you were saying, Steve, that there may be some evolutionary advantage to preparing yourself Thank you so much. Engage in a lot of conversation about the pandemic or entertainment around the pandemic, we may be more prepared. She talks a little bit about crime fiction and how she writes quite a lot of psychological thrillers, and that doing these kinds of things give her a sense of control around difficult concepts that we can't always control. In the world. So consuming narratives or writing narratives might help her mentally rehearse how she would handle them if they happen to her in real life. So that's kind of interesting. She also brought up two other reasons. One is social motivation, this sense of belongingness. And there's quite a bit of evidence that I think of it as like the speed effect. You guys remember speed? Thank you for joining us today. Absolutely. And there's a fair bit of evidence to support exactly what you said, Evan, combat veterans who serve together, people who survive natural disasters, groups of first responders develop these really strong bonds to one another. And that very often people who go to haunts, for example, or who go watch horror movies together, they feel closer in those experiences.

B:Huh? What if you go to a haunted house alone? What does that mean?

C:Yeah, I don't know. Maybe then you're trying to find your people. But right, maybe you're finding other people who have similar and that's a place where you might bond with new people.

B:For me, it's the artistic aspect of how they, you know, the haunted self.

C:Oh, right. Because you're designing.

B:You're on more of a research mission. Yes, yes, yes. An anomaly.

C:And so there's also this theory in social psychology called the tend and befriend theory or the tend and befriend system, not to be confused with fight or flight, which we will get to, which is that when we perceive threat, We will tend to our offspring and we will befriend those with whom we already have developed social-emotional bonds, and that there are different neurotransmitters and hormones that are released during those experiences that may reinforce it, oxytocin being one of them. So if you're experiencing stress, but you're around people who you already have established as being safe, and who you've already established positive social connections with, you may experience a true kind of biopsychosocial, but heavily, I guess, influenced by your biochemistry reaction that then deepens those bonds. So that's kind of an interesting take. And then finally, and I actually did it backward because she starts with this, The subheading is, fear can feel good, right? Like, this sort of goes back to what you were saying, Evan, it equals fun, right? Did you say that?

US#05:Yep.

C:Oh, there's Bob, sorry. You both kind of… I'll take credit. Bevin, this idea that, and I talk about this a lot when I am working with patients who struggle with anxiety. That we have a biological or a biochemical or a somatic experience in our body when we have, when we're exposed to threat, right, that what we call fight or flight, that sympathetic reaction, adrenaline surges, or we start to become sweaty, our heart races, our blood pressure goes up, all that good stuff. That reaction is physiologic, but how we then appraise or interpret that reaction It's deeply psychological. So for some people, that feeling is interpreted as fear. And for other people, that feeling is interpreted as excitement. And very often it's somewhere in between. And so when we feel afraid, we often have the exact same physiologic reaction as when we feel excited. And when it's safe, when you know that you're not at risk of harm, That psychological appraisal is a little bit easier. And so you have this kind of physiologic reaction that's fighting with the psychological reaction and it's like a safe fear. And very often that safe fear can be exciting, but there's something that happens after a sympathetic reaction. What's that?

S:Parasympathetic?

C:A parasympathetic reaction. Right, you could call it a crash. But that crash is actually, you actually have a lot of good feelings during a parasympathetic reaction. One of the feelings I don't like during a parasympathetic reaction, have you guys ever experienced this where you had a really intense sympathetic reaction, and then you notice the parasympathetic response setting in? Well, I have a very specific situation where I was with a friend once and we witnessed a terrible crash where a bicyclist was hit by an SUV and he wasn't wearing a helmet and we had like a front row seat to it because we were right at the light and it was horrifying to watch. She ran out of the car and just stood over him and then ran back and goes, what am I going to do? Meanwhile, I'm on the phone with emergency services giving them all the information. So we sat through that. We gave our statements, everything like that. And then when we left, we went to the grocery store, which was where we were headed because we were going to make dinner that night. And this sense of hunger set in because during a sympathetic reaction, you shunt blood away from your gut. And during a parasympathetic reaction, the blood goes back to your gut. And the sense of hunger that set in, I almost vomited because I felt so deeply hungry during that parasympathetic reaction. And it was the first time in my life where I was like, oh my God, this is what the textbooks talk about. I feel this, but other things happen then too, like you get these big dopamine dumps very often, that sense of relief, that post-anxiety feeling, when you finally go, ugh.

US#05:That's a good feeling.

C:And that feeling may be contributing to why so many people do enjoy kind of canned fear, because the post feeling is often better, and there's some evidence to support this, the post feeling is often better than the pre-fear feeling. And that individuals, here I have it right here in a study that was published in 2019, results suggested, I'm just quoting the abstract, that the participants reported affect improved, particularly for those that reported feeling tired, bored or stressed prior to attending the haunted attraction. So they go in, they're scared during, afterward they feel relaxed and good and lovely. And that feeling is better than the pre. So yeah, there's a lot of reasons that we like feeling scared.

B:You gotta be scared to experience that?

C:You don't have to be. Now, I didn't say that it was necessary to do it, but that it is a reaction or a result from it. And so, you know, the author kind of ends her piece with, the next time you're choosing between an upbeat comedy and a creepy thriller for movie night, pick The Dark Side. It's good for your health.

J:That's awesome. I approve this message.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:11:49)

J:All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time. All right, guys, last week I played This Noisy.

Voiceover:Any guesses guys? Nothing that'll be correct.

J:All right, so I'll say right out of the gate, I had a lot of people email in this week and got it perfectly correct. I still find this really interesting and definitely worth talking about. So Alex Freshy wrote in and said, Jay, oh my God, it has to be a Honey Mario or Mario. I don't really think that's the answer, but I cannot hear anything else. So in case you don't know, Honey Mario is what? It is a one of the characters in the world of, you know, Mario. If you look up Honey Mario and you listen to it, you'll hear something very funny. I have another guest here. A listener named Diana Gumber wrote in and said, hello, Jay, on a recent episode of Lateral with Tom Scott. One of the riddles was about a recording of an old woman telling wartime stories that is played at the edge of a forest in Ostrobothnia, Finland, right? I probably did not pronounce that correctly, so forgive me. Because it's so fresh in my memory, I'm going to guess that the noisy is that recording. I thought this was a really interesting guess, and of all the funny guesses or incorrect guesses that I got, I think this one is a really good guess because of all the details and everything. It's not correct, but I really did like that guess. Okay, so like I said, I had many people You know, email me in the correct answer, but I'll mention two of them. The first one is Patrick McComb and the second winner is Bill Zee, who both guessed correctly that this is you guys don't know who it is, huh?

S:I know it's Helen Keller.

J:It's Helen Keller. Yes. So this is Helen Keller. I have the recording of her talking and then the person that interpreted for her interprets what she said. So let's listen to that.

Voiceover:Longing me I feel how much more good I could have done if I had acquired normal speech.

C:What year was that?

J:Wow, that's a good question. Let me look that up.

C:It's such an interesting thing looking back to not, I mean, yes, it was 100 years ago, I guess now, but looking back to not that long ago and noticing the differences in the affectations and how people spoke. Like her interpreter has this very intentional voice.

J:Without a doubt, I made that observation as well. It's almost theatrical.

C:Yeah.

J:The way that that person is speaking.

C:And when you go back farther than that, you almost hear Britishisms in the American accent.

J:Yeah.

C:It's just fascinating.

J:Helen Keller was born in 1880 and died in 1968. And I bet you that that is probably from the late 40s and 50s, I think.

C:I bet you it's a little older than that, but it could be. Even when you look at film from the 40s and 50s, the voices are quite affected. I mean, I say affected. That's just how people talked.

J:Yeah, it's an incredible thing to try to even guess, you know, for people who have their sight and have their hearing, to try to even understand what it was like being her, like, you know, the first part of her life, she didn't know how to communicate, and therefore she did not know how to think. And she describes that. Later in life, she talks about how she couldn't really think without language. I find that incredible. You know, it just blows my mind. And it's a scary thing to think about as well, right? Like, you know, imagine being in that state where you're feeling things, you're experiencing things, but you can't explain anything to yourself in any way. You don't really comprehend anything. I don't know. That's that's profound.

C:Yeah.

J:All right, so that's cool. You know, congratulations to those who guessed correctly. You know, not just the two winners, but everybody, lots of people guessed correctly. I'm glad that so many people know about her. But we must shift now to this week's Noisy. This week's Noisy was sent in by Farrah Shimbo. Check it out. Now, I will ask you, because many people sent in this noisy and it's a great noisy and I dislike it because it also has like a creepy Halloween type of vibe going on with it. But if you sent it in and I know you know what it is, then don't don't guess correctly. Let people actually try to guess what it is. I just think that'd be more more fun to hear what people have to say. So if you sent it in, just don't bother. I know you know it and I will check. And if you do it, Steve's going to get angry and he'll hit me.

S:And you don't want to see me when I'm angry.

J:No. All right. So you can email me at WTN at the Skeptics Guide dot org if you heard something cool or if you want to guess this week's noisy. Steve, there are announcements.

S:Let's hear them.

J:All right. So first and foremost, if you enjoy the show and if you really feel like the work that we do is valuable, then please consider becoming a patron of ours. You can go to patreon.com forward slash Skeptics Guide. We have different levels. All of them will go to help us continue to do the work that we do and to expand what we're doing. I really appreciate it if you would think about joining us. You could also become a part, you could get our mailing list. The SGU has a mailing list. We send it out every week and it contains everything that is happening or has happened the previous week and we'll also be telling you about things like, oh, you know, Noticon and events that we're going to be at and all that. So if you're interested, just go to theskepticsguide.org and you can join our mailing list on our homepage. If you are inclined, you can also give our show a rating on whatever podcast player you're using. It helps people find us. We have three shows coming up, guys. We're going to be in D.C. on December 7th and we have two shows that day. We have a D.C. private show and we have a D.C. extravaganza. We do these shows with the entire SGU crew and George Robb and Ian, who, you know, the watermelon guy, you might know what I'm talking about. He will be there as well. And if you're interested, just go to theskepticsguide.org. We have buttons on the home page or you can go to our events page and you can find out more information. Last but not least, people are buying tickets. The board room board gaming thing sold out. Sorry about that. That is sold out. But there are still some VIP tickets left. And of course, you could always just buy the main tickets for the conference. This will be May 15, 16, and 17 of 2025. You can find out all the information. If you're curious, just go to notaconcon.com. Did you follow that? Notaconcon.com. I got it.

S:Okay, thanks Jay.

Emails (1:19:15)

S:Guys, we have one email which is really a cluster of emails. We're just going to talk about them all at once. We had a number of responses to our kind of off-the-cuff discussion about battery replaceability in smartphones and in laptops. We kind of mixed the discussion together and people were often responding to one versus the other. But the other concept is the same, that over the years, like over the last 20 years, it seems that, I know the smartphone came out in 2007, but even longer for laptops, that replaceability, repairability, upgradability has been sacrificed in favor of small slim profiles. And so we had a number of people respond to that. A couple of people pointed out that, especially for the smartphones, there's a reason other than a slim profile why they may want to make the batteries more, like, unable to remove the batteries. Do you see those emails?

C:Yeah, that is waterproof.

S:It makes it waterproof. Yeah, it's harder to make it waterproof if the battery is removable, if the case is— Yeah, if you can open the thing. You can open it and there's contacts and everything, yeah. But if it's all integrated and sealed, it's easier to make it waterproof.

C:So that's— That's pretty new, to be honest.

S:Yeah, it is.

C:Like, waterproofing is—I mean, maybe there have been versions of it in the past where it was semi-water-resistant, but— I don't know, you remember the days of like the water damage, like you would take your phone and just drop it in the toilet. Yeah, and they were like, you dropped this in your toilet. And you're like, no, I didn't.

E:They're like, the sensor inside says you did.

C:Oh, that happens to women all the time. That doesn't happen to you, huh?

E:It's never happened to me.

C:So because we will wear our phone in our back pocket, and then we'll sit down to pee. And you forget your phone's in the back pocket.

S:Oh, gosh.

C:Yeah.

S:It's only almost happened to me when I'm, like, using my phone while peeing standing, right?

C:Oh, okay. That would make sense.

E:What are you reading while you're peeing if you're... Whatever.

S:Somebody... There's a period in my life where it happened constantly to me.

C:Constantly. I had... Put it in your front pocket. No, you can't. I'm a woman. Have you ever seen a pair of women's pants? I know.

S:They don't give you front pockets.

C:No, they're like, they're like two inches deep.

S:Yeah. Is there like reasoning for that? Does it not look good?

US#08:Oh, here we go.

S:That'll be next week's email prompt.

C:Welcome to the patriarchy.

S:My daughters complain about it all the time, the lack of front pockets or pockets in general in female clothing.

C:Anyway.

S:Yeah, so there's that. There's the waterproof thing. And a lot of people pointed out that it's not universal. There are definitely brands that make other choices for laptops especially.

C:There is the... But they're not dominating the market.

S:They're not. Yeah, like one of them was like, you guys may never have heard about this. You know, it's the framework laptop that it's essentially customizable and upgradable and all that kind of stuff. They basically going in the opposite direction. And which is interesting because these trends do change, like technology trends change in response to technological advancements as well as in response to how people use things. And we're a little bit biased, I think, because we I think we lived through like this main period. Do you remember the when the trend for cell phones was to get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller?

C:Yes.

S:And then as soon as smartphones came out and the real estate of the interface was important, then they got bigger and bigger and bigger.

C:Yeah, but also to be fair, I feel like there were a lot of emails about that. And when I was making the point, like smaller, I didn't mean, I meant thinner.

S:Yeah, thinner, lighter.

C:Yeah.

S:This is not related to what you were saying, Cara. I'm just saying this is an example of a reversal in a technology trend. So I definitely there was a time when the both I think for definitely for laptops I think it's more complicated for phones but for laptops they got smaller thinner

C:No, I think it's the same for laptops as it is for phones. Like, some people want a really big screen, some people don't. But you still want everything else to be as thin as possible.

S:Right, other than the screen size, this is a different, we're talking about two different things, you're right.

C:But the screen size is what dictates the size of the laptop.

S:But at any screen size, there's a trend towards thinner laptops and lighter, thinner, lighter.

C:And same with phones.

S:And therefore, a slimmer, we'll take a slimmer profile. But I don't think that that trend is necessarily universal or it may not be holding up because things have shrunk so much it doesn't matter as much anymore. It mattered when the bulk of your laptop was the most important feature of it. A slimmer laptop was really nice to have. Now, I wonder if it's just that, well, you can market a laptop that's not optimized for slimness because the technology is so slim at baseline, you could now start to incorporate other features like a replaceable battery or it's easier to upgrade or it's easier to repair or whatever.

C:Yeah, and I wouldn't care if my, if laptops never got thinner than they are right now, but they just kept getting lighter, I would be thrilled. You know, I think lighter matters more.

S:At this point, I think it doesn't, for me, it doesn't really matter, you know, the weight or the slimness, but I think they're all fine. If they stayed as light and slim as they are now, but were easier to upgrade and repair and, you know, swap out the battery, I might go for that feature. Once it gets to a certain size, getting even smaller is less and less valuable.

C:But why would Apple, for example, want to sell a modular laptop? They can make so much more money.

S:Another point is there are industry incentives that are not necessarily consumer incentives, but industry incentives that work here. That's hard for us to know because we're just consumers.

US#06:And definitely not environmental incentives. Fair point to bring up though.

S:I know. But I think here's another thing. Battery life has gotten so much better. Like definitely for smartphones, they basically last the life of the smartphone now. Whereas like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I would replace my smartphone when the battery stopped working. Now I replace it when the camera upgrade is enough to make it worth it.

C:You know what I mean?

S:I have a three-year-old phone. My battery's fine. I still go all day. It's not a problem.

C:Oh, mine's not. I still replace it because the battery is The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella,

S:Like, you remember, again, having lived through the entire computer thing, you know, from the 80s, 90s, and beyond, you remember when we were obsessed about certain features of our computers? Like, we were obsessed about the clock speed and, you know, all that stuff. Now, I couldn't even tell you what my, yeah, like the megahertz and the gigahertz, whatever. Now, it's like not an issue anymore. It's super fast. It's faster, you know what I mean? Like, being a little faster is not a big deal. The hard drives are kind of that way now. I mean, I still need to pay attention to hard drive space because I literally, because of the show, I produce gigabytes of info. But I think for most people, it's like, whatever, it's giga-whatever. It's like, I have a two-terra-whatever drive. It's more than I'll ever need, and that's fine. And people aren't as obsessed about it as they used to be. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Yeah, but for most people, it's like, yeah, you just want it to be, look pretty and be not too heavy and whatever, the battery will last fine. Yeah, the upgradeability for laptops is interesting. I always, and this is something that's happening, is that the time between getting new computers and feeling the need to upgrade my computer is getting longer and longer and longer. Do you guys experience the same thing? It used to be like a year after I got my computer, I was jonesing for a RAM update or a bigger hard drive. Now it's like, I don't even know how old my computer is.

C:I never upgrade. For me, I get a new computer because something on my computer critically dies, and to fix it would cost half the price of a new computer, so I might as well just get new technology.

B:Yeah, that's true. My iPhone is six versions behind at this point. What are they on right now? I'm ready. I'm ready to upgrade. I can't wait. But it's mainly for the camera. Huge camera upgrade. Huge. For everything else, it's more incremental.

C:I said this offline, but I have a 13 mini and I don't want it. I want, I'm going to drive it into the ground because they stopped making the mini after that. I don't understand why. There has to be a lot of people like me. It just wasn't selling as much. It's not worth it. It's so bizarre to me that more like smaller, like slighter women don't want a smaller phone that fits in their pocket. They're so big now.

S:People prioritize different things. It's all trade-off, right? It's all different trade-offs. All right, guys, let's move on with science or fiction.

Science or Fiction (1:29:28)

Theme: Oldest Item #1: The oldest extant building in the world is the stone circular tower of Tell Quaramel in present day Syria, which is about 12,000 years old. Item #2: The oldest example of metallurgy is copper smithing artifacts from 7,500 years ago in modern day Serbia. Item #3: The oldest example of literature is a 7,000 year old cuneiform tablet, The Goddess of Creation, from Liangzhu culture in modern day China.

Answer	Item
Fiction	Item #3
Science	Item #1
Science	Item #2

Host	Result
Steve

Rogue	Guess

US#04:It's time for science or fiction.

S:Each week I come up with three science news items, four facts, two real, and one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. There's a theme this week. The theme is the oldest. So it's, I've done this before. It's three things claimed to be the oldest of its thing. These are all cultural things. Okay, culture, technology, towards the thing. Are you guys ready?

E:Okay.

S:All right, here we go. Item number one, the oldest extant building in the world is the stone circular tower of Tell Khwaramel in present-day Syria, which is about 12,000 years old. Item number two, the oldest example of metallurgy is coppersmithing artifacts from 7,500 years ago in modern-day Serbia. And on number three, the oldest example of literature is a 7,000-year-old cuneiform tablet, the goddess of creation, from Liangzhu culture in modern-day China. Cara, you go first.

C:Who knows? Okay, 12,000 years ago. So that's like 10,000 BCE. And when you say the oldest extant building in the world, like, you're not talking about ruins.

S:So there is actually criteria for what counts as a building as opposed to ruins. And there just basically has to be, it has to be complete enough that you consider it, it's an actual building, it's not ruins. So this is the oldest one that meets those criteria.

C:Okay, yeah, so it's kind of random and arbitrary.

S:It's a little arbitrary, but it's intact enough that it counts.

C:Okay, sure. And then we've got metallurgy. See, I'm so bad at this. You guys talk about all these different eras and stuff. Metallurgy, coppersmithing artifacts from 7500 in Serbia. And then literature is around the same age. Is there a definition to literature, like it needs to be portable or something?

S:No, it just needs to be like a story. So not just a snippet of something, you know, it's an actual story.

C:So basically, the building is older than the metallurgy and the tablet. They all seem reasonable to me. Maybe the metallurgy is older. Let's say the metallurgy is younger or older, that that's the fiction, but I have no idea why.

B:Okay, Bob? Yeah, these all sound reasonable. Nothing's really leaping out at me. So I'm just going to go with my gut and say that the building from 10,000 BC is fiction. Okay, Evan?

E:Well, I'll go with my gut and say the example of literature 7,000 years old is the fiction.

C:Yay, no sweep.

J:Oh boy, I'll spread out Jay, no help from your fellow rogues. Yeah, I'm going to go with the literature, because I thought that Gilgamesh was the oldest.

E:That's what I thought, Jay. Yes, Gilgamesh, right?

J:Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know.

E:That was always my idea.

J:I've never even heard of this. And, you know, I am an English major, Steve, you know, so I could write you a poem whenever you want. All right. But yeah, something doesn't sound right about that one. I think that one's fake. All right, so I guess we'll take these in order.

S:The oldest extant building in the world is the stone circular Tower of Tel-Koromel in present-day Syria, which is about 12,000 years old. Bob, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science, and this one is science. Yeah, that's damn old is what that is.

E:To be considered a building, yes. It's the right area of the world, though.

S:Yeah, it's the right part of the world, Syria.

C:And it's made of stone, so like that could have happened.

S:And yeah, you know, I can't guarantee you that everyone agrees on where that cutoff is to what a building is. So, but this is multiple sources say, yep, this is the oldest one. The other one that sometimes gets mentioned is almost as old as the Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, which is 9500 BCE to 7500 BCE was when construction was done on that one. And this is, so it's not quite as old as the Towers of Tal, there were three towers apparently, one is standing enough to be saying, oh yeah, that counts as a building.

C:That's cool.

S:Yeah, very cool. Let's go on to number two, the oldest example of metallurgy is coppersmithing artifacts from 7,500 years ago in modern day Serbia. Cara, you think this one is the fiction. And this one is... Science. This is science.

C:All right.

S:So, yeah, there's multiple examples of copper metallurgy from this region, all in this sort of, in where Serbia is now. And so they clearly, that culture, that broader culture had hit upon, you know, copper smelting before anybody else did. This belongs to the Vinca culture. You guys ever hear of that before? The Vinca culture?

E:I think I've heard of it.

S:You think you've heard of it? So yeah, this is, you know, this is, you know, a major archaeological, you know, find that there was this civilization in this part of, you know, what is now Serbia, and they had copper metallurgy before anybody else, you know, they had they found copper axes and signs of copper smelting as well. So, Very cool. Which means that the oldest example of literature is a 7,000-year-old cuneiform tablet, the goddess of creation from the Liangzhu culture in modern-day China is the fiction because the oldest literature is Gilgamesh. You guys are correct.

E:It is Gilgamesh. Remember that.

S:It's an epic poem describing the adventures of Gilgamesh, the king of Babylon, from dates to 2150 to 1400 BCE, so 4,000 years ago. You know, this was like a full epic story of his adventures. He was trying to defeat death, you know, figure out how to become immortal.

B:Good luck with that.

S:And was actually culturally continuous to modern times, meaning that the Epic of Gilgamesh influenced Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, influenced stories in the Bible. The cultural connection to modern times is unbroken, which is interesting. Now, there was a Liangzhu culture in modern-day China, which predates the oldest dynasty in China, and they had apparently amazing architecture, a huge city, walled city, but no evidence of any literature. Thanks for watching. It was just keeping track of stuff. It was just writing down how many bags of grain do we have, that kind of stuff. And that slowly, that was like proto-language, and then that evolved into writing and then into stories.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:37:18)

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong."  – — Richard P. Feynman, (description of author)

S:And then there were a couple of little poems that didn't really count as quote-unquote literature. Again, it's like, where do you draw the line? But the epic of Gilgamesh, everyone agrees that's literature. I can live with doubt and uncertainty.

E:I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. Richard Feynman. Ties back to your newsletter.

S:Absolutely. This is not exactly the same thing, but it's in the same ballpark. You know, the illusion of knowledge, the illusion of information, adequacy, et cetera. Yeah, very similar. All right, guys. Well, while this show comes up, we will be in Vegas at Psychon. Yes. Next week's show is one that we recorded in August because I'm going to be in Dubai at a skeptical conference. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is hosted by Steven Novella, I will do what I can, what sightseeing I can. You've got to go up into the tallest building in the world. Of course I'm going to do that.

E:Go to the roof and take a selfie. Yeah.

S:So the next new episode will be in two weeks, and I'll report about my adventure in Dubai.

E:Yeah. Cool. Can't wait to hear.

S:All right, guys. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

E:Thanks, Steve.

S:And until next week, this is your Skeptic's 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.