SGU Episode 1025

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SGU Episode 1025
March 1st 2025
"Next-gen cargo ship: efficient, innovative design sailing towards a sustainable future."
SGU 1024                      SGU 1026
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
C: Cara Santa Maria
J: Jay Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
Quote of the Week
"One of the few universal characteristics is a healthy skepticism toward unverified speculations. These are regarded as topics for conversation until tests can be devised. Only then do they attain the dignity of subjects for investigation."
Edwin Hubbel, The Realm of the Nebulae (Yale University Press: 1936)
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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 Wednesday, February 26, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody, Tara Santa Maria.

B: Howdy.

S: J Novella, Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein.

E: Good evening everyone.

S: So unfortunately, we got some sad news today, just today is we're recording this, Michelle Trechtenberg died.

E: I read it and I didn't believe it at first.

S: Yeah, she so she played Dawn on Buffy the Vampire.

B: That's how I know her and she, she was great. She was so good.

S: She had a bottom. She had a whole acting career, obviously not just Buffy, but yeah, apparently she was only 39. Yeah, apparently she had a liver transplant and so probably died of complications of that. I don't I'm not seeing any specific information but that's probably has something to do that, although I couldn't find why she had the liver transplant.

E: Yeah. Does it seem? I imagine by average it's young to be having a liver. Transplant.

C: No, I mean it can be, but you know, some liver transplants are related to lifestyle and some liver transplants are not. You know, people can have things wrong with their liver for a lot of different.

E: Reasons, yeah, I imagine there's a, you know, genetic disposition for liver disease or other factors like that.

C: Actually recently saw a patient in the hospital who had a form of cirrhosis that is non alcohol related cirrhosis. It can just. Oh boy.

S: Or you can get an infection or you just had, you know, just some other liver disease. Yeah. So no information, But yeah, that's. That's sad.

E: Yeah.

S: Yeah. If you're younger than me, by definition you're young.

C: And if you're younger than me, you're really young.

S: Yeah, you're really. Young.

C: Yeah. You remember my friend Holly? Yeah, she the a rocket just launched like just now she was posting about it.

S: Oh yeah. Yeah, 10 minutes ago.

C: No, like today there was a rocket launch for with like going to the moon, I think. Yeah, SpaceX Falcon 9 launches the IM 2 Moon mission and there's a bunch of like, science on it.

S: That's a lunar Lander. Yeah, intuitive machines.

C: So I don't know, I think I might have mentioned a friend of mine who is an optical engineer. Her name's Holly Bender on the show before. I've definitely had her on talk nerdy, but gosh that was probably like almost 10 years ago now so I should probably.

E: Did we meet her in Washington?

C: Yeah, you, you guys met Holly. So she worked on an instrument, the lunar trailblazer. I guess the instrument that she was working on is looking to see how much water there is in this one crater in the moon. Where did the water possibly come from? Could it be used? And so, yeah, I got to watch the launch, you know, through her Instagram feed, which was only, it looks like just an hour ago she posted the launch and said we're going to the moon, which is like, just really, really cool. What a cool thing to be involved to be an engineer who worked on something and then watch it go off to space.

B: That would just. I can't even relate to how that awesome that would.

J: I know, right? Could you imagine?

B: And nerve racking.

C: Yeah, that's yeah, yeah for sure. Yeah. So I don't know much about the instrument or about the actual like what's all going to in the payload on the so it.

S: Was a Falcon 9 rocket that launched 2 probes, right? So it was calling it a ride share. So it was the Intuitive Machines Lunar Lander and NASA's Lunar Trailblazer, which is the one that your friend worked on. That's the one that's going to be looking at the water. But they're both basically missions to support the eventual Artemis getting people back to the moon.

B: If it ever happens.

C: These are the kinds of things that make it happen.

B: Well, I mean, not Musk. Musk doesn't want it to happen. So what Musk wants?

E: Well.

C: It looks like this is on Musks rocket.

E: So I think he would want it to happen then he.

B: He does not. He wants to go right to Mars. He does not want Artemis. That's my understanding. He does. He does not think we need to go to the moon at. All it's too late. We are so committed.

E: Haven't we talked about this before? You have to have the moon before you have Mars.

B: Of course it does. But that that he doesn't, I don't think. I haven't read about it in a little while, but I don't think he agrees. Let me call him. I'm going to show here we can just go straight to Mars, which is of course utterly ridiculous.

E: His line's busy. I'll try him later.

S: All right, let us know if you get in touch with. Us.

E: Yeah, I'll let. I'll pipe them in.

B: And another thing.

S: And another thing.

E: And about that asteroid?

C: Oh yeah, sorry.

B: Oh, yeah, that. Did you guys hear about the news about the that asteroid? Well, it looks like, you know, we're not going to get hit at all. Bob, you.

C: Sound disappointed, Bob?

B: Good. Yeah, I don't think I'm going to own this. I'm disappointed. It's it's it's it's down to four, one thousandth of a percent chance years. And that's fine, that's fine. But like, I forget what venue I said this at, but I was like, you know, I can't help but be a little disappointed because for me, a best case scenario would be like, yeah, we're nervous. And we're like, you know, a little bit of like, holy crap. But I'd like the idea of countries uniting to, to address this and be, have a rocket ready within a couple of years to like a dart type mission to deal with like a kinetic impactor, right? To deal with an asteroid that's heading towards the Earth. And, and, and then, you know, in 2028, like, oh look, Oh yeah, it's not going to hit us, but we got a, we got a rocket ready to go. That's what I wanted. I wanted to for us to take even more seriously this idea, idea that we need to be ready to go with an impactor to, to push away or, or change the trajectory of any asteroid that we might find and not have enough time. And it's great that, you know, getting hit would have, that would have been horrible. I mean, not, you know, an extinction level event, but we could have lost a city. So yeah, obviously I wouldn't want anything like that, but I wouldn't mind a little bit of a scare for a couple years to to be prepared for something that could potentially hit us, you know, you know who?

S: Could it still hit the moon or is that ruled out too now?

B: I just read about the earth. I'm not sure.

E: About the estimate not long ago was as high as 3.2% chance.

B: Yeah, the highest, highest ever, highest ever calculated probability for something like that, which?

E: That's what got you all worked up and going, right?

B: No, that one I got actually a little scared 'cause we had gone. It was a little.

E: Too much.

B: Yeah. I mean, I 'cause we went from one in when I started tracking the news, it went from one in 88 to one in 72, then it was down to one in 32 or something. Like, holy crap. This is like going in the wrong direction, which is common. That happens for these things. It seems to get even more likely. And then then it's like gone like, Oh yeah, it's not gonna happen. Yeah, but one like 1% is that was the big, that was the big point. That's that, that was the, you know, the important percentage because over 1%, that's when, you know, these agencies get involved and started making plans and stuff. So if it stayed, if it stayed at like 1.5%, then we probably, we probably would have, you know, made serious plans including potentially getting a rocket ready with a, with a, with a kinetic impactor if it stayed at one 1.5%. So whatever. You know, it's just like, it's just weird to be even just a little bit disappointed about that. It was kind of a weird thing, but but I think you want. I think I've related my reasoning behind that.

S: But it's not going to hit us.

B: Probably not overwhelmingly unlikely, but not impossible.

S: Not about just saying. Is it possible that the percentage will start going up again as we get more data? Probably not. That would happen.

B: I put some good money against that once they get it down that low.

S: But don't worry Bob, eventually another asteroid will threaten.

B: To kill millions of people. It's basically inevitable. So yeah, that's why, dude, that's why I think we need to be even more prepared. We are. We are much more prepared than we used to be, but want to be even more prepared than.

S: That double prepared.

B: Double, You know, it's one of these. It's one of these existential crises, crises, crises, yeah, that that we could do something about.

S: Yes, we can actually prevent.

B: Right, if there's a, if there's a a Wicked Carrington level solar flare level event, you know, there's well, we can't we can actually do a little bit about that too, but we probably.

S: Do a lot about that. That's in the body, right?

B: That's true.

S: That's not a good example. That's another thing that's not going to happen. Eventually it's going to be really bad and we can completely 100% prevent not not it from happening, but we can prevent any of any damage from it. Should have to harden our infrastructure. Against it.

B: The difference is that we are making really good strides in tracking these near Earth objects. But we are, I don't think we're doing much. We're not doing near enough, in my opinion, to guard against such a a solar event.

S: Actually, Bob, I've been reading that we aren't doing a lot about that, really.

B: Well.

S: That actually we've been hardening the the grid in the infrastructure the last 20 years or so significantly not again, not enough, but it.

B: Yeah, I think, I think it's not, it's glad that's a little bit better than than what I had thought based on what you've said. But still, I think we could get, we can get fried. I mean, and even, you know, even for, you know, an EMP electromagnetic pulse. I mean, you don't even need a solar flare to, to induce those currents. You could somebody could just just basically explode one nuke over the country and at your back into the 1700s. That's yeah, that that level of hardening. We're we're nowhere near the hardening required for that. And that's something that is not unlikely unfortunate.

E: Yeah, we'll probably do ourselves in before any kind of cosmic event does us in, so.

B: Yeah, I can't disagree with that. But yeah, there are there. There are events, though, that we we really can't do anything about. And those are the ones that, yeah, just like, you know, whatever. That's why it feels good though.

S: Being in, being in the crosshairs of a gamma ray burst, getting that much?

B: Yeah, GRB. Yeah, they're about a a light year wide. Yeah. There's not much you could do about that. Yeah. You didn't even know what's coming. Really.

S: Yeah, right.

B: It's like, oh, here, there it is. We're done.

E: Turning into the Hulk.

B: Yeah.

News Items

Congestion Pricing (09:55)

• Why Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic—But Congestion Pricing Can 

S: All right, Jay, start us off by telling us about congestion pricing. What is that and doesn't work?

J: Well, you know when you get a stuffed up nose.

S: Yeah. Oh yeah.

J: It has nothing to do with that.

E: Thank goodness.

J: Everybody knows about traffic congestion, especially if you live, you know, near any cities in the United States. You know, it's a constant problem. This is happening in cities around the world, and the standard response is typically to do what? To add more lanes, right? We've all seen it happen.

B: Double the lanes.

J: It works for a little while, but what happens after a period of time is it stops working, which is a big problem and a lot of people might think that adding lanes is actually a good thing to do, but but research and real world evidence tells us a completely different story. Ultimately it makes the congestion even worse, which I I really think is amazing when you think about it. The reason is something called induced demand. But have you ever had induced demand? Have I had it?

B: I'm going to have to say I'll guess yes, OK.

S: I have actually, I've, I've experienced induced demand, exactly the same phenomenon in a completely different context. We, our clinic is backed up especially for new referrals, right? If you want an appointment and you're a new patient, you might have to wait six months to get an appointment. And over the years, I've been there again, I've been there for 30 years. So I've had experienced this cycle many, many times. We hire new clinic clinicians, which opens up a whole bunch of new, new slots. The wait time goes down and then it goes right back up.

Voice-over: Yeah.

S: Because the idea is that if there is basically a bottomless pit, a pent up demand, you know, people will basically wait a certain amount of time for their appointment. And so the wait time is always going to inflate to that point, no matter how many slots or people we bring on or whatever we do. You know, the question is, is there a limit to that though at some point? Like it is not literally bottomless, it's just much larger than the supply. So the the same question comes up with traffic. If you added, if you keep doing that, you keep adding lanes, at some point will you outstrip the pent up demand or not? And then the other question I have, if adding lanes makes a rebound and even worse than, would reducing lanes make it better?

J: I don't. I don't think so. Does it work the other direction?

S: It's not reversible.

J: In the, in the sense of traffic induced demand is it's well documented. It's where you increase the road space, which then encourages more people to drive because they people are aware that the projects are happening. And then they think, OK, I could, you know, I could drive on that road during times I normally wouldn't because they expanded it should be fine. So over time, the roads become just as clogged as they were because essentially people were waiting for the opportunity.

B: Or taking like back roads too, isn't that, isn't that play a factor?

J: All of that, all that, all the behavior that people have to avoid the traffic jam.

S: Or they make make less of an effort to carpool. Or or they'll drive. They'll take trips they wouldn't have otherwise taken.

J: Yeah, and the list that the researchers were talking about, you know, they're saying these are people who previously avoided rush hour or who switched from public transit. In some cases, the expanded Hwy. entices people to take jobs from farther away, particularly if they're driving to their interview during off peak times and like oh this was great, the commute is fine. This actually happened to me once where it really bit me in the ass. The research shows that over time the highway fills up again and congestion is back to where it started or worse. So that we've observed this repeatedly. It's been happening so much and it's so well documented that we're not. There's zero question about whether or not this is happening. A study of expanded highways in the US found that traffic volumes tend to rise in direct proportion to the new capacity, which is basically what Steve was saying. So in other words, for every 10% increase in in lane miles, traffic increases by about 10 or more percent. So Rd. expansion doesn't eliminate congestion, it kind of fuels it if you think about it from that perspective. So beyond traffic expansion has other unintended consequences like more vehicles on the road mean more pollution and encouraging suburban sprawl leads to longer commutes and higher infrastructure costs. Like there's all these dominoes that fall once you start doing this, cities end up in a really expensive cycle of expansion that never actually solves the problem. And I was talking to Bob about this, like when you, when you talk about Rd. expansion and the cost that it takes to do like these, you know, 35, you know, 10 year projects to expand the roads, you know, we could be talking about billions of dollars.

S: Oh yeah.

E: Oh, absolutely. No doubt about. It it's not cheap. And chances are, they'll go over budget in more cases than not.

J: All right, so hold on to your pants, guys, because, you know, you might not like what I'm about to say. So the researchers concluded that the most effective way to help congested roads is something called congestion pricing. All right, you, you guessing where I'm going with this?

E: Yeah, it's. Toll.

J: Exactly. So it's a toll to drivers who use the roads during these high traffic peak hours. And what this does, it's an incentive for drivers to adjust their driving habits. You know, if you want to look at it in a very nice way, you're saying, look, we got to charge a toll during these particular times on these particular roads because the goal here is to help the congestion problem. And people who are have to take those drives at that time, no matter what, they can't deviate. They're going to be really unhappy about it because it's going to add up and it could, you know, be a problem for certain income levels. Absolutely.

C: How is that different than like here in California? It's really common on the larger freeways that there are HOV lanes that are toll lanes.

J: Yeah, I don't know how they're like faster those HOV lanes are. I mean I always use them when I when I can.

C: But you have to pay for them here.

J: Oh, you do have to pay for.

C: That's what I'm saying, yeah. They're like faster track lanes. So now you have do they work? I saw. Well, they're. Yeah, they're not nearly as congested as the rest of the traffic.

E: Yeah.

J: Yeah, I don't know if they they didn't say anything about it in this study. And I, you know, I'm sure that there's a ton of different things that states do. Like I know some states have like stoplights on the entrance ramps.

C: Yeah, we have those two in California. We have all the things that you need for congestion and the.

E: Point seems to be though, that it's, it's tied to what price someone's willing to pay. And that's enough people it's a discouragement for them to not. Yeah, not.

C: Yeah. And if it wasn't, I think that because LA is an interesting case because we have it side by side, right. Like if you're driving down the 110, Yeah, on the left side of the 1:10, there are paid lanes and the rest of the 110 are not paid. And the left side is less trafficky than the main side. Yeah. So people are willing to use your. Free Internet, but if you want the fast Internet. Exactly. Yeah, Yeah. And you kind. Of like that idea though you have the. Option.

E: Build your own.

J: Yeah, well, what they're trying to do is encourage people to take options that they probably wouldn't take without a little nudge, right? So can you drive off peak times? Can you work from home? Can you shift to public transport? Can you carpool? Because all of these things have have directly shown to to help reduce congestion if people are exercising them. But what it turns out to is we're animals of convenience and and we usually pick the most convenient thing that you know, and and sometimes that's not in the better good for our society. So unlike expansion, this congestion pricing can act. It actively manages traffic rather than passively accommodating it. And as we know, the accommodating part doesn't really work anyway. So cities that have implemented this congestion pricing have seen some really good measurable improvements. London introduced a congestion charge back in 2003 in the traffic and the city center dropped measurably quite a bit. Air pollution improved in public transit.

E: I realize it's been 20 years that they've had that. Interesting.

J: Then they did it in Stockholm back in 2006 and traffic declined by 20% and the policy became permanent after the public support grew. And then they did it in Singapore. They have one of the the most advanced congestion pricing systems. You know, they have adjusting tolls in real time based on traffic levels and keeping roads flowing efficiently. So we could clearly see that this works. And the question is why aren't, you know, more cities doing this? So I think the real problem here is there's political resistance. Like look what happened in New York City recently, right? We had you want to go to New York City, you got to pay, what was it, 10 bucks or something to get into the city?

S: It was initially 15.

J: Or 15.

E: And then they reduced it to 9 I.

S: Believe from the reduced.

E: It and that's on top of whatever tolls you're paying to cross bridges and and other things. This is on top of that.

J: You know, but the, the thing that society has to realize is, you know, it's like you turn this thing on and it costs money, but it's, it is a solution though, right? Like we can't just not do things because we don't want to pay more money. Like there is really no option. If you think about it, cities will become so crowded that there will not be another way to fix them. There's only so much that a city can handle traffic wise and foot traffic wise and everything like there, there's just is going to be a limit. There's an upper limit to all of these things. What are the other solutions that we could do it? They're really as far as I could tell, there aren't any.

C: I think what's hard about this is a similar argument that you'll see regarding our prison systems, which is that unintentionally or intentionally, what we often do is either criminalize or financially penalize poverty in our cities. And so the the very people who are like, let's say you're going to work and you need to be there at a particular time and you can't afford the time it takes to drop your kids off at school and then get on the bus to get to work. And you can't carpool because you don't know anybody else, you know, at your work. You know, whatever the case may be, they're the very people who can't afford this and they have to do it.

S: Yeah, but you can, you can apply for a discount basically.

C: OK, that's good to hear.

S: Yeah, so, yeah, so, but I've been reading like the congestion pricing can work if implemented correctly, right? If it's not implemented smartly, then yes, it could. It's a regressive tax and it can hurt low income people, especially if you're a worker. It's barely hanging on. Now you got to spend 10 bucks a day just to get to work. That could be huge. But you. But if you handle it so that, let's say the. Revenue is used to expand public transportation and people who would have a hard time affording it can get an exemption or a discount etcetera. But there's, there's lots of things that you could do that would that amplify its effectiveness and minimize any downside. And so that's, you know, that's just always the nuts and bolts of, of smart management, right? And it just takes thought. It takes the ability to make changes to, you know, to evolve, to react to how things work.

C: And to adapt to that particular, the needs of that particular city because, you know, you think about New York and yes, there maybe I'm wrong here, but it probably is more of a privilege to be able to ride around in a car in New York. If you can afford a taxi, an Uber, a driver like because you can get anywhere in New York on foot or in the subway. And you can do it fast. Like usually it's actually faster to take the subway somewhere than it is to take a car because. Of parking, Oh my God. Exactly.

E: Parking's a nightmare.

C: But I think about Los Angeles, it's a wildly different scenario. Sure, right. You have to have a car. You cannot get by without a car in Los Angeles and so.

S: But that's a choice too. That is a choice as well that you know, we collectively make and we could, you know, especially in cities and in large metropolitan areas, we could invest in public transportation, have dedicated bike lanes, have E bikes and E skirts or whatever, have other options that make it that make walking and using these other of forms of transportation way more convenient and not just rely on cars.

C: But within reason, like, yeah, within reason. LA is also just an enormous city.

S: Yeah.

C: And I think that like we have to sometimes remember too, that like different geographic locations have different struggles.

S: But yeah, I mean the congestion pricing should be on the table as one of the options. Right.

C: Yeah, it makes sense. And now we have the technology to do it. I don't see how we could have done this, you know, 20-30 years ago.

E: Well, London did it, I mean.

C: That long ago.

E: Yeah, 2003, right?

S: Yeah.

C: 20 and how did they adjust that? Was it adjusting like minute by minute? It's a good.

S: Question No, she was like in New York, it was just basically like 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM or something. Like it's just pretty much most of the day.

Voice-over: OK.

C: So it wasn't really see, I'm thinking of it as like an adaptive rate, no kind of like surge pricing on a new.

S: No such surge pricing. It's just in this zone during, you know, the day and the weekdays or whatever they had. They carve out basically most time not at 2:00 in the morning, but many basically whenever there was actually be traffic there. Yeah, it's not surge pricing.

C: I.

S: See something completely different, but where like AI comes in and that kind of analysis, which also needs to be part of the equation here, is like really managing traffic light timing, having turn lanes, things like that that could also really mitigate.

C: Congestion, turn lanes, That's our biggest complaint in LA. We just don't have that many of them. Yeah, we do something called, like anti gridlock, which is during morning and evening rush hour, the parking lane, you cannot park in or you'll get towed.

S: Yeah.

C: And that's really helpful. Like, they turn an entire parking lane into a lane of traffic. But of course, there's always like that one asshole, you know, and every, it's like, well, until they're towed, they're just blocking miles of.

S: Yeah, but that, that's a setup for disaster, right?

C: Yeah.

S: But, and you might and some you can sometimes just turn a traffic lane into a turning lane. And even though you're taking away one traffic lane, that could still improve congestion.

C: Oh, massively, yeah. At these huge intersections where everybody's going left for sure.

S: OK, AI will solve it all, don't worry.

AI Therapists (24:04)

• Human Therapists Prepare for Battle Against A.I. Pretenders - The New York Times 

S: Speaking of AI, yeah.

C: Speaking of AI not solving things on the turn.

E: Wait, AI solves everything?

S: So are AI therapists coming and how do they work?

C: AI therapists are pretty much already here. But yeah, there's there's a lot of conflict around this topic. And I think part of the reason why this is a good topic for the show, you know, it has all the things, it has all the ingredients that we talk about a lot on the show. But also I think it lends itself to hearty debate, hearty debate. So I hope that that my fellow rogues will engage and give me your two cents and what you guys think about this as well. So there's a recent article in the New York Times. It was actually just published on the 24th, so 2 days ago by Ellen Berry titled Human Therapists Prepare for Battle against AI Pretenders, and the subtitle is Chatbots posing as therapists may encourage users to commit harmful acts, The nation's largest psychological organization warned federal regulators. So what she's referencing. There is a recent presentation to a Federal Trade Commission panel in which Arthur Evans, Arthur Evans Junior, the who's the chief executive of the APA. And specifically in this case, I'm talking about the American Psychological Association, which is the, let's call it the professional organization. It's not really a union, it's more of an advocacy group, but the professional organization that I belong to, the APA for psychologists here, the other APA is the American Psychiatric Association, because that's not confusing at all. But here we're talking about the psychological APA. In this presentation specifically, Doctor Evans cited court cases involving two teenagers, and these teenagers used an app called Character dot AI. Character AI allows people to create fictional characters and then interact with them, chat with them, and the fictional characters chat with each other. But those fictional characters aren't just avatars. Very often the characters have AI technology behind them. And So what happens and happened in this case, and it's cited that it's happened in other cases, is that those chat bots start to sort of sprout up and they sprout up with different roles. And because of the nature of being involved in an app where there are avatars, where there is anonymity, people start to talk about stuff that's hard to talk about. And when they start to talk about their mental health, what's going to happen? These sort of chat bot therapists start to pop up like weeds. And very often they use terms like therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist. They claim to have advanced degrees from universities. They claim to offer particular types of interventions. In this particular case, the one that was cited at this APA presentation, they were talking about character AI. But there are other apps. Obviously, ChatGPT is one that we use a lot, Replica, because they use generative AI technology. They're not programmed to have particular guardrails, right? Their outputs are coming from a black box and they learn from the user. One of the things that often happens is that they follow. It's not encoded, but it's something that's been observed by computer science scientists over and over. They observe a tendency of chat bots to utilize a phenomenon called sycophancy. So it's this tendency for the chat bots to mirror, amplify, and validate whatever the person interacting with them says, right? That's what's going to enamor you to the chat bot. That's what's going. To make you feel. Safe, of course, right, you're not space you're not going to want to engage in a chat bot. That's like you're wrong and let me tell you why or I'm going to challenge that belief of yours, right. You're going to want to engage in a chat bot that's validating what you're saying, that's amplifying what you're saying, that's reinforcing what you're saying. Now, don't get me wrong, that is a fun fundamental principle in mental health intervention. Any psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker or other mental health worker that has legitimate training, that is a licensed provider will tell you that part of what they do is validate the, the patient client, you know, whatever term that they use within their within their profession, they validate the very human components, their fears, they validate their their worries, they validate their emotional expressions. It's, it's important to establish rapport, but we know the difference between psychologically beneficial or fundamentally human experiences and unhelpful or sometimes dangerous negative self talk, unhelpful or sometimes dangerous beliefs and narratives. And we know what to look for, the red flags we need to look for if somebody is at risk for engaging in harmful behavior towards themselves or towards others, Not only are we trained in how to see that, we're trained in what to do about it. We have a duty right. We are legally bound to protect individuals from themselves and from others in particular situations.

S: A carrot sounds like these are not AI therapists, they're chat bots. Chat bots that people are using as therapists, but they're not programmed to be therapists, they're programmed to be chat bots.

C: They're, they're just chat bots that are generatively and that that are getting labeled as therapists and are generatively moving more and more into that role. But the but the point I guess here that's important is you make an important distinction, but to the end user, they don't know the difference.

S: Right, but something shouldn't be offered as a as an AI therapist unless it's programmed to at least follow the standard.

E: Yeah, why allow this confusion to reign?

C: Well, and that's the question. AI is simply a platform where people go and they chat to each other. And so you may be chatting to a person behind an avatar, you may be chatting to a chat bot. You don't know because they say, hi, my name is Doctor, whatever Doctor laptop. And should it be obligated?

E: To disclose, right. So here are some.

C: Some guardrails that character AI says that they since these such and I didn't even tell you about the scenarios, but have said that they are using these new safety features that they say they're using within the last year. They said that they have a disclaimer present in every chat that reminds users that quote characters are not real people and that quote what the model says should be treated as fiction. They also said that when users are dealing with mental health issues, a disclaimer is added to any character that calls themselves a psychologist, a therapist or a doctor that says quote users should not rely on these characters for any type of professional advice. And also if the I guess they're able to scrub the content of the chats, if references to suicide or self harm come up, a pop up will direct users to a suicide prevention helpline, likely 988 or an online version of that. But some people argue that that's not enough because what ended up happening in the two cases that were cited by the APA chief executive, they cited two teenagers, a 14 year old boy and a 17 year old boy. The 14 year old boy. And I'm going to, and I probably should have said this at the top of the show, but I'll say it now that there's a kind of trigger warning here because I am going to be discussing suicide. The 14 year old boy in Florida died by suicide after interacting with a character claiming to be a licensed therapist. And the 17 year old boy in Texas had what they're calling, quote, high functioning autism. And after interacting with a chatbot that claimed to be a psychologist, there was a lot of kind of hostile and violent behavior that started to develop and that was particularly targeted towards his parents. So both of the boy's parents are now suing character AI because of what happened. That raised alarm bells for the APA as a whole. Like he was saying, basically, if this was a real therapist, they would have lost their license. But because it's an AI chat bot, there's no recourse. What do we do here? It's it's almost like it's a part of the design that these chat bots are going to mirror, mirror, mirror. So if you have a person saying I'm concerned about this, I'm worried that I might do this. Is there sort of a bug within the actual black box that is generative AI where they would say things like that sounds like a good idea, That's concerning. It's deeply concerning. And so how do we regulate something like this? That's an important question. It's one thing if a company is building an AI therapist and they're trying to market it. It's another thing if chat bots within a platform are popping up, whether it's the users themselves that are creating them or I don't even know how they're, if they're sort of like self creation within these platforms, how do we police that information? Are disclaimers enough, especially when we're talking about children on the platforms who may not understand the difference and honestly shouldn't be engaging in anything even remotely claiming to be therapy without consent of their parents if you make the companies.

S: That produce the chatbot liable well and they'll find. A way to keep it from. Happening, and that's the interesting thing.

C: About what's happening right now is that the parents are, you know, are engaging in civil suits against the company. And so, you know, money talks. And so in this particular situation, I guess time will tell, you know what comes from that. So, you know, the APA said part of the concern right now is that generative AI is just too damn good. 10 years ago, you knew. You knew when you were talking to a bot. That's just not the case anymore because of generative AI. In this New York Times article, the author also talks about some examples of when this happened in the past that were really problematic. So, of course, organizations that are concerned about the mental health of the citizenship or of the citizenry, they cite the National Eating Disorders Organization. This is an organization that is legitimately concerned about eating disorders in America and wants to enable or provide intervention or at least screening for individuals so that they can get the help that they need. We know that we have a mental health crisis in this country. We know, Steve, you just mentioned this in the very last segment. We know that people sometimes wait months to see a professional. Of course, as professionals, we want to make it so that people can get access to help sooner. We're not trying to bottleneck access to services here. The problem is, here's an example that was cited IN2023A chatbot was developed by the National Eating Disorders Association, and it utilized generative AI and doing what generative AI does. Ultimately, they found that it was offering users weight loss loss tips. That is not what you want from an eating disorder chat bot therapist. There's a lot of screenshots up on Reddit. You can search for them. But showing chat bots encouraging suicide, encouraging eating disorders, encouraging self harm, encouraging violence, you know, some of these may not have intended to be therapeutic chat bots. They may have had a totally different intention, but there is a real risk there. So, so basically the APA is asking the FTC to start an investigation into chatbots claiming to be psychologist, psychiatrist, mental health professionals. And they're hoping that this inquiry will then compel companies to share this data so that then there can either be new legislation or the legislation that already exists on the books can actually be enforced by law enforcement. And we can start to see a change because we are at a point where this can be really, really dangerous. And we have seen some changes before. For example, during the Biden administration, they cite that the FTC chairwoman, Linda Kahn, was really focusing on AI and fraud. And that only recently, within the past month, the FTC imposed penalties on do not pay, which is, I don't know if it's an app or a website, but they claim to offer, quote, the world's first robot lawyer. And they're like, you cannot say that that robot is not a lawyer. They did not pass the ball. Yeah, State. And what? And so now they. Are they are prohibiting the company from using that language and making that claim? And so that is sort of One Direction that we're hoping we they are hoping that this goes. The article talks a lot about the two tragic cases with these teenagers and how they were harmed. But the article also does the thing that I sometimes struggle with in media, which is that they, in an effort to provide, I think, balance, they tell the other side of the argument and the other side of the story. Now, to be fair, on the one side, they're talking about the APA, this massive organization that represents 10s of thousands of psychologists. And on the other side, they talk to one psychologist, somebody named S Gabe Hatch, who is both a clinical psychologist and also an AI entrepreneur. And they talk to him about some of the the computer or the AI work that he's been doing where he's been trying to design experiments that test people's ability to get help from AI chat bots. So in this experiment, he asked both human clinicians and ChatGPT to comment on vignettes where there were like, fictional couples in therapy. And then they asked 830 human subjects to look at the answers and choose which ones were more helpful. Now, in his study, which was recently published in in PLOS Mental Health, they found that the bots received higher ratings. And the subject said that they were more, quote, empathetic, connecting and culturally competent. Care of my wife as you.

S: Know is a pH. D counselor and she teaches counseling students right to get their degree. She's been using ChatGPT to create her vignettes for teaching purposes, and she says they're awesome. Like, it just saves so much work. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Completely nails it. It's like. Whatever it has access to that information. So yeah, I mean, if again, in the hands of a professional who could then read it and evaluate it, it can function in that way. Yeah. And that's that's an important.

C: Point and that caveat should not be lost in the hands of a professional. And here's a quote from Doctor Hatch, he said. I want to be able to help as many people as possible in doing a one hour therapy session. I can only help at most 40 individuals a week, which by the way is insane. There's no way using 40. Yeah, right. Yeah. When you go. To the bathroom. But yeah, then he says lunch. We have to find ways to meet the needs of people in crisis, and generative AI is a way to do that. And what I say to that is not yet, not yet more bugs to.

E: Work out we need.

C: Stronger regulation. Yeah, We need more research into this area. And just like when we talk about robotic surgery, just like when we talk about all of these other ways that technology is really, really helping provide increased access, we need to be able to have a human being at the helm. Checks and balances are necessary. You know, they didn't talk about this in the article, but one thing that I think AI would be brilliant at is the assessment component.

S: Of course, because.

C: A lot of people don't make the distinction, and it is harder to make when we're talking about psychology, psychiatry less so with counseling and like LMFTS and LCS, but sometimes this is the case as well. When we're talking about psychiatry and psychology, a large component of what we do is psychodiagnostics, and then another component of what we do is psychotherapeutic intervention. But oftentimes, while we were doing psychodiagnostic work, we are also therapeutically engaging with our patients and vice versa. When we are doing intervention, we may see the need to tweak a diagnosis or to dig a little bit deeper, but sure, screening tools. Does this person seem to be at high risk for depression, Anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, you know, a decision tree of questions that are answered to help flag somebody who's at risk? Of course an AI could do that. I do not like the idea of AI intervention yet. I think that there are probably going to be cases kind of very, very fundamental CBT, ACT, DBT interventions that are already quite manualized where this may actually be really, really helpful. I, and maybe this is my own bias, I see it being tough to do the type of like existential work that I do with, you know, cancer patients and end of life patients if you're an AI chat bot. I could be wrong though, you know. That's probably my own you bro. I mean what I what I think.

S: Is that I think the technology is there, it just hasn't been adapted to purpose yet. And as you say, like evaluated, regulated and you also have to think about like how is it going to be used by whom, what the work, what's the workflow going to be, etcetera. You can't just throw it at the problem and and hope that it works. No, this is too critical an area. You have to use it intelligently and you can't assume.

C: That just because generative AI is really good at, you know, providing information or producing a piece of art or, you know, producing a song, that they're also good at ethics. Yeah. And, and that's a huge part of mental health intervention. But what I can't see.

S: You know, a role for it in the nearer future is, let's say, in conjunction with a therapist or a psychiatrist or whatever that you have, like they do the assessment and whatever they get the patient to a point where they say, all right, I'm going to see you once a month now. And you have access to this AI, you know, therapist that you could use in the meantime. And, and that, and the, and that program is designed to flag concerning language and alert the therapist or whatever. So it's, and that way it could be an increase. It's like an, an extender of the physician, not a replacement. And it makes them more effective. They could see more patients. And you had. Yeah. Yeah, you could have a bigger. Caseload because, you know, 75% or 80% of the work is being being done by AI. And so so, yeah, used correctly, it could be huge. But yeah, you can't just throw it at the problem. All right, Thanks, Cara. Guys, let me ask you a question. Cara, I don't want you to answer this question, OK?

Redefining Dyslexia (43:31)

• Redefining Dyslexia 

S: I always do that to you.

C: Steve, I'm doing it 4 for one.

S: How? Would you define dyslexia? What is well phenomenologically, what is dyslexia? The I think the common.

E: Understanding is that people will read words and get the characters either in their incorrect order and they interpret their brain can't interpret the the words that are they're trying to read. What do you think, Bob and Jay?

S: It's transposition is that.

B: The proper word for that of of letters and words. Misidentification of of letters of word strings, letter strings and within words. I mean pretty superficial. Or do they see? Do they see?

E: Letters upside down. Is that part of it? I've never really, I don't think. Yeah. So you guys are?

S: Reflecting the common public conception of what dyslexia is, that idea is about 100 years old and happy birthday.

E: And it's.

S: Amazing. The cultural inertia of that. Yeah, it is incredible.

C: Because you're I used 10% of my brain.

E: To figure that one, I don't think.

C: About it that way at all but it was probably that's why I didn't ask you beaten out of. Me.

S: Yeah, that's.

C: So interesting, but most people think it's like transposing reversing words.

S: Or transposing words or letters, Reversing letters. See what Sigmund Freud had to say.

E: About it. So it's a reading.

C: Disorder it yeah, so I'm.

S: Going to ask you, Cara, see how up to date you are. This is kind of more neurological and psychological, but oh, OK, so from the.

C: Site because I'm thinking from the DSM that's how when we diagnose it yeah it's identified in the DSM 5 as a specific learning disability and it's specific to reading so there are different kinds of learning disabilities dyslexia is the one that's specific to reading OK yeah so that you're like in the. Past you're up to the 19. 60s, seventies. Right.

S: Yeah.

C: Comprehension. Things like that, yeah. So it's.

S: It's very interesting because, you know, obviously I'm very interested in neuroscience in general, but also just definitions, how we define things and how that shapes how we think about it. Dyslexia was first identified and named. That name was coined in 191887 by German ophthalmologist. That's important. Rudolf Berlin by an ophthalmologist, and he thought that this inability to read, that he was detecting in some specific cases was due to quote UN quote word blindness. And he thought it was a difficulty of visual processing, right. And that part of that was like that they reverse things or get them in the wrong order. That idea from 1887, which was never correct, then got stuck in the public consciousness and will just not go away. But it's not correct, you know, in 1925, next milestone. Now it's very interesting, a neuro ophthalmologist, right? So this is somebody who's both a neurologist and an ophthalmologist that is 100 years from there.

E: Right now, yeah, it's 100 years ago.

S: Advanced the theory that it's not due to word blindness. So it's not a visual problem, it's not a an eye problem, it's a, a neurological problem. And he thought it was due to a problem of cortical dominance, which is not correct. But he did shift the conversation from the eye to the brain. Basically, not a visual processing problem. It's a word, a language processing problem. And so then that became the dominant theory. Then of course, it moved to neurology entirely. Like it has nothing to do with ophthalmology. And, you know, by, you know, more research was done by the 1960s. You have kind of the definition that Cara was talking about where it it the definition focused on the fact that it was a specific learning disability, meaning there were children who had. This is still part of the of the definition. Oh yeah, this is absolutely.

C: Learning disability still in all of the yeah, yeah. So in other words.

S: You have more of a problem with language than you, than your general IQ or your learning level would indicate, right? That makes sense, right? So you take, you do a.

C: Full neuro psych battery and it shows that you, we would predict that you would have this level of, you know, reading comprehension, language understanding, but for some reason there's a decrement there. Yeah. So there's a specific decrement.

S: In language. But that definition is just not that it's wrong, it's just inadequate because it, because it doesn't address, doesn't adjust the why exactly. It is completely agnostic as to the why. It's a purely clinical diagnosis of you have this specific problem, but of course that's not enough because we want to research and think about and especially if we're going to treat it, we want to know what's causing it, what kind of a problem is it, Not just what the deficit is, but what actually is producing the problem. So when we go beyond the 1960s, more research gets done by by the 1990's, the term phonological awareness comes about. And Carrie, have you heard that before? I mean I.

C: Mean, I've heard of the phonological loop. I know phonological and I know awareness, all right. But yeah, so but you never heard.

S: Of like dyslexia is a problem of phonological awareness. No, I don't think I have. Yeah, I think.

C: That's when it really.

S: Became a neurological disorder, Yeah, I don't think we use that even.

C: In neuropsych, I don't know if I've heard my neuropsych colleagues, but that's since the 90s.

S: That's been that's what I learned in medical school in the 90s. Like, I remember I there were two husband and wife doctors at Yale, pediatric neurologists very good, who specialized in dyslexia, and that's what they taught me in 1990, you know, Yeah, I guess it's.

C: The awareness part that I don't often hear phonological awareness. Yes, you're talking about. It's the the. Problem and.

S: The way it was described to me at the time was these are children who have difficulty understanding at a conceptual level that words are made-up of sounds. And so they have difficulty going from phonemes to words like that's the problem they And so if you're decoding the letters in a word, you don't know how that relates to the sounds and you can't build the word out of the sounds out of the letters. So they never get to that point where they can go from the written word to a, to knowing what the word is. And then of course, everything flows from that. And you know what? The more I'm.

C: Actually, like now I'm interested and I'm like looking at a few things like from neuro psych rehab and I am seeing that term used a lot. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm seeing phonological awareness, but I'm also seeing things like obviously visual processing, auditory processing, orthographic processing, executive function and even something called rapid auto automatize naming. So there are a lot of different domains. There are and this.

S: Gets to where I'm eventually getting so OK in 1994. The definition. This is the sort of the the official definition of dyslexia was. Dyslexia is a specific learning disability and still part of that that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. In 2002 this was expanded a little bit. The definition then became a deficit in processing and phonological component of language resulted directly in difficulty with decoding, spelling, accuracy and fluency. That in turn impacted comprehension and reading experience. Impoverished reading experience further impacted the development of vocabulary and background knowledge, which also had a negative influence on comprehension. So it's just a more of a holistic, if you will, view of, of of language and dyslexia. So it's like, yeah, at its core, it's a specific deficit of phonological awareness. But you have to see this in the context of how language develops, how people learn their culture, their language, because it has it affects different languages differently. Some languages are easier to read than others and it doesn't have as much of an impact. Interesting. Yeah. For example, and, and the child's other intellectual abilities. Right. So it's in the context of of each individual child. But at its core, Yep. They're just that the part of the brain that turns word letters into sounds and sounds into words is not working well. And and that has all these downstream effects. It sounds almost an all or.

B: Nothing thing. The way I've seen the spectrum culture though, it's like, it's totally a spectrum, huh?

S: It's totally a spectrum, yes. Why would some?

B: Words. Why could they? Why would they have trouble decoding some words but not other words? Well, some word. I mean, think about English.

S: English is a horrible language. I mean, yeah, we all have trouble decoding.

C: Some words and not other words. Some words are more.

S: Phonetic than others, right? I can't remember who it was. I said why is the word phonetic and not spelled phonetically?

C: Yeah, exactly. But.

S: That's pretty funny. Yeah. So somebody with?

C: Dyslexia is going to is. Somebody without dyslexia is still going to struggle with encoding certain words. Somebody with dyslexia is going to struggle with more. Of them, yeah. And again, you could have mild.

S: Moderate, severe, like this dyslexia is a continuum. But and interestingly, even up into the 2000s even, you know, the 2000 teens, people deny that dyslexia even exists as an actual neurological disorder. What do they think? It's a disorder?

C: Of Will, well, here I'll, I'll tell.

S: You in the 2000 SO UK Labour MP Graham Stringer called the diagnosis of dyslexia a cruel fiction and stated to label children as dyslexic because they're confused by poor teaching methods is wicked. So basically poor reading ability was blamed on poor teaching and poor parenting. Now where have we heard that before? So blaming neurological disorders on bad parenting or bad teaching has a very long pedigree from ADHD to autism, right? Pretty much schizophrenia refrigerator.

C: Schizophrenia. Yeah, I.

S: Mean so many things and it doesn't make sense.

C: Because you have a class with the same teacher and some kids are struggling and some aren't, but they're just a bad teacher can.

S: Be widespread in a classroom.

B: Right, but.

C: It's just easy, just.

S: To blame the parents or blame the teachers. Well, and plus just some people just are just, you know, just don't understand neuroscience. Like, no, these are specific ability. We're not blank slates. Our brains have strengths and weaknesses. They have abilities and everything is on a spectrum. Everything is a bell curve, you know, basically of ability. Yeah. And I think that there's.

C: A cultural phenomenon here, which this taps into as well, which I struggle with a lot, being a psychology researcher who is both kind of has a foot in the very medical model, but also a foot in the very kind of like phenomenal logic, like philosophy side of psychology, which is that we do have a tendency as a culture to talk about things as if they're quote real medical or in your head, therefore not real, which. Is insane to me. Yeah, it's totally false. Everything is real like unless we're talking about pure malingering right? Feigning a mental illness for secondary gain or for primary gain Actually just for primary. Then like there's.

S: It's even complicated that Munchausen.

C: Disease is.

S: That a well, Munchausen is secondary.

C: Gain. So let's by the way. But that could be a. Disorder unto itself.

S: It could be. It could be so.

C: So I'm saying just straight up primary gain, right? Just straight up malignant deliberate fraud primary. Gain. Yeah, fully faking. So they can get out of prison or something, make money or something like that. But that aside, which is?

S: Yeah, not, which is super. Rare. Super rare compared to all the to all. The the more complicated functional.

C: Neurological disorder, I'm sorry there's something going on there. And the distinction between.

S: Psychiatric and neurological is also kind of a fiction. It's all the same. It's all the brain. It is, it's just different specialties about how we treat it and the kinds of things that we're familiar with. But it's all the brain and it's really dangerous. I.

C: Think not only to my profession, but also to the patients who need help to talk about something being legitimate over here and just in somebody's head over there. Exactly. That's super dangerous. Psychotic. Yeah. And.

S: We have, you know, as a profession we have tried to move as far away from that as possible, like even calling it a functional neurological disorder or non epileptic seizures.

C: Yeah.

S: We use terms that are not judgmental, just describing the phenomena. I'm not saying like, oh, this is fake seizures or this is psychogenic or whatever. Yeah, they still. Yeah, some people still. Use those. I know it's it takes. Time takes time, all right. So in 2009 there was the Rose Report, which was an overview of dyslexia. It basically reinforced the phonemic awareness theory and that dyslexia is a specific neurodevelopmental disorder with genetic predisposition. It made focus. However, I'm just making a number of very specific recommendations for interventions at the individual and societal school level, etcetera, etcetera. That's basically where the definition of dyslexia SAT until today, right until, you know, this year. But there's been research going on and every now and then, like you, so much research gets done. It's like, OK, we have to now retool our definition based upon the last 1015, whatever years of research. So there's a new study that is called toward a consensus on dyslexia findings from a Delphi study. So this is basically looking at a lot of data and saying, all right, what can we say about dyslexia given all the latest research, basically a consensus of an expert panel on dyslexia. So they here's their conclusion. They they conclude with a proposed definition, which has a lot of pieces to it. I'm going to read you the ones that they emphasize. Here's the consensus statement. Dyslexia is a set of processing difficulties that affect the acquisition of reading and spelling. It's a little bit more broad than just phonemic awareness, because that's not the whole picture. It's only part of the picture, they say. In dyslexia, some or all aspects of literacy attainment are weak in relation to age, standard teaching and instruction, and the level of other attainments. That's the specific disorder part of it. Across languages and age groups, difficulties in reading, fluency and spelling are a key marker of dyslexia. Dyslexic difficulties exist on a continuum and can be experienced to various degrees of severity. The nature and developmental trajectory of dyslexia depends on multiple genetic and environmental influences. Dyslexia can affect the acquisition of other skills such as mathematics, reading comprehension, or learning another language. The most commonly observed cognitive impairment in dyslexia is a difficulty in phonological processing, in phonological awareness, phonological processing speed, or phonological memory. However, phonological difficulties do not fully explain the variability that is observed. That's kind of the new bit. Working memory, processing speed and orthographic skills can contribute to the impact of dyslexia. So that's that's now the modern sort of synthesis, the consensus on what we're doing. It's more complicated, more nuanced. Yeah, but it's also.

C: Like honestly, it's clunky AF. Oh yeah. What do you say to a parent when they go? What does it mean that my kid has dyslexia? Well, that's translating that.

S: To the to the family, to the patient, to the to the parents. That's part of the skill of the job. Yeah, I'd love to tell you.

C: But.

S: Exactly. But when we're talking to, give them the other answer.

C: That's that's.

S: Not meant for a public facing definite, you know, concise definition. That's professionals talking to professionals. So it has evolved over time and you're basically tracking with the research. I think it's really important to note to know what it is, what the professionals say now about what it is. And it's really fascinating also to think about how persistent that 100 and whatever 40 year old myth about dyslexia being a visual processing problem is. It's really interesting.

Small Modular Reactors for Cargo Ships (59:40)

• Korean SMR-powered container ship design revealed - World Nuclear News 

S: All right, Bob, you're going to tell us about using small modular reactors for cargo ships. Yes, I am earlier.

B: This month, a Korean shipbuilding company unveiled a bold new design, A nuclear powered container ship using a small modular reactor coupled with an innovative propulsion system using carbon carbon dioxide. Now of course I had to. I had to do a deep dive on this. Doing that though, I kind of reinforced the idea in me that that if nuclear reactors are. Cool mobile nuclear reactors are even cooler, and so not just reactors that sit in one spot to power cities or research labs or whatever, but ones that are integral to propulsion. It's just such a fascinating idea. One iconic version in history that I found that reminded myself about was the atomic car from the 1950s. You guys remember that? There was actually a few ideas tossed around. The one that stood out for me was the Ford Nucleon. What a great name. The Ford Nucleon was a concept car. It was designed as a fission powered car of the future. The reactor was in the back. It would it would power a steam engine for propulsion. And it seems ridiculous now, right just thinking about that as like really obviously technical and safety issues make a car like that impossible even 70 years later. It's like we would could not pull that off. If you go through those years though, nuclear planes and tanks were were seriously studied as well, especially during the Cold War. But those designs always had issues like weight, shielding, radiation size, you know, just not practical at all. But all that said, we do have mobile nuclear reactor powered vehicles today. And by a nuclear reactor I'm this is I'm talking fission. This is a nuclear reactor is basically fission or fusion or or other even more sci-fi ones like antimatter, whatever this is. So I'm talking fission when I say nuclear reactor. So we do have them. What are they what, what exists today? These Subs, nuclear Subs, right, But also aircraft, aircraft carriers, right? They are just aren't think about that. They are amazing. These are massive vessels. That somebody said that. These guys can operate for 1/4 of a century without refueling and on top of that, they have amazing safety records. And then there's another one. What's another example? There's one other one that's I think that should be on this list and that's the, the Russians famous nuclear powered Ice Breakers. And, and that's kind of it. There's other examples, you know, maybe a commercial ship here made in Russia or, or maybe even some other Russian projects, but they're kind of more footnotes than anything else in my mind. It's really just the Subs, nuclear Subs, aircraft carriers and the the Ice Breakers. And but that's it. I mean, it's a little frustrating for me as it's sci-fi geek because like that's the only really three types that we have. Of course, I have to throw in nuclear rockets there because that is absolutely changing. They are working on nuclear powered rockets now. It seems inevitable that that this is going to happen. So, but they don't exist yet. They don't read, they don't exist yet. So one reason in advance though I think it's going to change is make a big change in that this is something we've mentioned a few times on the show, small modular reactors, SMRS. So this is a class of small fission reactors that could be many different types. It could be Gen. 4 reactors, it could be pressurized water reactors, it could be molten salt. Doesn't matter really the type, the specific tech doesn't matter, but they're, they're all basically small fission reactors and they're also built. The, the idea is that they will be built at a factory and then shipped to a location to power things. Many different things could be micro grids, communities, you know, remote communities, buildings, data centers. I'm sure we're going to be seeing these in data centers. Their their power output is typically, you know, you know, 10 to 300 megawatts compared to the to the real big boy reactors. They they can range from 700 megawatts to 1600 megawatts, 1.6 gigawatts. And right now where do you think the actual small modular reactors are right now that are actually working and doing, doing stuff right now? It's the military, right?

J: No, it's like.

B: China and Russia and they have like 4 they so, so we're kind of at the precipice of this really, really taking off. There's really not many right now. And it, it's, you know, it's not hard to predict, right? And maybe I should have predicted it at the beginning of the year. The, the number of these, these types of reactors are going to explode worldwide, so to speak. Yeah, there's, there's at least 8080 SMR designs being developed now across 19 countries and they're being considered seriously considered for tons and tons of applications. So I mean, it's kind of obvious that these some of these designs were almost surely proliferating in near future and some I hope will be used to move ships. Well, Bob, we we have to say.

S: Though Yeah, there's a lot of stuff we have to.

B: Say, but go ahead. What do you? I appreciate your optimism.

S: But you know what the big deal killer is for SMRS? Yeah, the the expense.

B: The expense?

S: They are more expensive per unit energy than the big reactors. Yeah, right.

B: And that's a problem a lot more it's a shape your products. It's more than a problem it.

S: Could be a deal killer because why would you spend you know you know already nuclear powers at the high end of the cost per unit energy and if now you go even higher cost why would you do that when if you're just having something stationary attached to the grid, why not build a big boy and have it's been it's more cost effective. Oh, absolutely. That that's.

B: Yeah, that, that's definitely a good point. I was going to segue to that at some point after I got over with a little bit of my techno optimism here. But yeah, that's a potential problem. And I think Steve, I think if that if that proves to be almost a deal killer, essentially a deal killer, I think that that cheaper micro reactors which are out of scope of this news item, micro reactors I think will probably proliferate. But this dovetails with.

S: Your news item with your point because so if you're just attaching it to the grid and making electricity, you have to compare it to all the other ways to make electricity in terms of cost effectiveness. But if you design an SMR with a specific purpose that is worth the trade off, then it can become cost effective like the military uses it because the strategic advantage is worth the higher expense. Absolutely right. Absolutely.

B: But what you're?

S: Going to talk about is for cargo ships and that's they are designing it to purpose so that it's not just again connected to the grid and that also can be cost effective. You also mentioned data centers. So there's a company that's designing them for specifically for data centers that again, because it's designed for purpose, it can be cost effective. So I think that's the direction that the SMRS are going to go, not just hooking them up to the grid, but for specific purposes where the advantages make it cost effective, right? And that's why I mentioned 80.

B: There's 80 of these designs being developed by 19 countries. All of them are similar but also kind of distinct. And in my opening statement, I made AI made a specific point to to say that that this idea, there's no idea idea is to use a small modular reactor coupled with the this innovative propulsion system, which is critical, which is critical to their to their plan because it brings in efficiencies that are that, that, that make it a better cargo ship in terms of space, in terms of safety, in terms of a lot of stuff. So let me let me go through some of the ideas. There's one other thing that makes.

S: That can make an SMR cost effective is if you if if you build it in a location where the waste heat can be utilized for a specific purpose, then you like double their efficiency. And so Yep, Yep. So.

B: That's like with the data.

S: Center thing that you have to build it with the data center, you know, and then you could use the waste heat to cool the data center and suddenly it's twice as cost effective as it was yeah so yeah, so.

B: So all that said, I think I, I still think that that SMRS are going to have a future and, and from what I could tell doing the, the research for this specific application for cargo vessels, it sounds, it sounds very promising. Of course, it's got to be vetted. And the information that a lot of the information that I've seen is coming from this this company and the company is South Korea's HD Korea Shipbuilding and Offshore Engineering. And they're, they're a big player in the movement and they're and they're, they're, they are what this news item is about. They recently announced that the plans for a nuclear powered cargo vessel capable of carrying 15,020 foot containers, which is a massive commercial transport ship. It's it's at the definitely the bigger end of the of the spectrum. Their, their release, their the information that I've come across so far is it seems to focus on three things and it make it makes a lot of sense. They're focusing on regulations, safety and efficiency, right? Those things I can't, I mean, those are the top three, it seems. I can't think of anything else that would really be, you know, more important than those. So that that's a little bit encouraging. So to illustrate what they're doing with the regulations, I'll, I'll quote Park Sankman. He's the head of the company's green energy research lab. He said HD CASO is strengthening cooperation not only with major classification societies, but also with international regulatory bodies to establish international regulations necessary for the commercialization of nuclear powered vessels. OK, So what are classification societies? These are organizations that set and enforce technical and safety standards for ships, including nuclear powered vessels. So safety, OK, safety is the second. Is the second critical focus here. Their ships are really, their plan is really taking this seriously. They're using a they're planning a double shielding system where you've got stainless steel and light, light water working together to shield and protect against, you know, the things you need to shield against ionizing radiation, gamma rays, neutrons. And it also dissipates heat very, very well. So the steel absorbs gamma radiation and gives structural integrity, integrity to the system. And the light water moderates the neutrons and absorbs radiation as well and dissipates the heat. And they also plan to create a facility in South Korea specifically for testing and validating their design. So that's, you know, that sounds good. Those words sound good. So in terms of the company's final focus efficiency, I think this is where their design could have some impact. I found, I found really fascinating as hell. So, so critical to this, this efficiency that they, they, they talk about is the partnership of the fission reactor with the propulsion system. Having a small modular reactor on the ship is it's not only an efficient source of heat, right? Nuclear energy is much more dense than chemical energy. But it also means that you think about what you can get rid of. Now you can get rid of the exhaust system, the engine exhaust system, you can get rid of the fuel tanks that because you have this reactor, you don't need those things. So you can just pull them right out of the ship. And now you have a lot of extra space where more of those 20 foot cargo cargo containers can now go where this other stuff was. So the, the more cargo you can carry, the more, the better, the more efficient, you know, the whole Enterprise is and that the better the bottom line, the bottom line. So that's one, that's one boost in efficiency. The next boost comes from what what the ship actually does with the reactor's heat, right? Because the heat, the nuclear reactor, that's just a source of heat, whether if you're burning fossil fuels or if you have any other type of reactor, you're really just like, we need to create a source of heat that that's efficient. So that's it. You got, you got your heat source. So traditionally ships use their heat source to heat water to make steam, right? You make the steam that drives the turbines and that generates the electricity for the propulsion. That's kind of how how the flow goes for a lot of ships. So this propulsion design though is different. It does away with the steam and it replaces it with supercritical carbon dioxide. And this is the kind of like a secret sauce. It's such a it's such a really cool idea. So the bottom line is that why CO2? Why are we using CO2? Why not just use water? One of the main reasons that CO2 expands more efficiently than steam, bam, right there. It's just like it's just flat out more more efficient and it's because of the supercritical state. So how efficient, how efficient is it? A traditional steam cycle is 30 to 40% efficient. The supercritical CO2 cycle is up to 50% efficient. And if you, if you look at the numbers they're talking about, they, they typically say that their, their, their design is going to be about 5% more efficient. And 5%, yeah, it might not sound like a lot, but that could be huge for if you, for lots of ships travelling the seas, 5% increase efficiency could be, could be pretty awesome. And so not only is it more efficient, but it's smaller and it's lighter than steam term turbines. There's no water or steam. And so that means that there's less corrosion and no emissions as well, which of course is a, is a wonderful addition there. So this is, this is kind of, I see it looks like a, a nice 1-2 punch. You got the small modular reactor and you've got the, the CO2 replacing water. And it makes such a, a potent combination. But you know, bottom line, there's less fuel waste, there's more cargo space, there's lower maintenance, there's 0 emissions and that's nothing. This needs that the shipping industry consumes about 350 million tons of fossil fuel annually. So decarbonizing shipping could really, really help in our, you know, our damn climate crisis. It's not something that's going to make a hugely dramatic difference because I think shipping accounts for three, only 3% of worldwide emissions like that. But but any, any, you know, any little bit helps. And this is, I think a pretty cool idea. So, so, yeah, so a lot of industries are looking into SMR's and hopefully they're going to pan out here and become cost effective. It's, it seems like we're, I think it seems like we're on the edge of, of this stuff taken off. It's not just SMR's and micro reactors. I hope, I hope, you know, maybe I'm being too positive, but I, I hope that, that it takes off and it, and it's more than just little niches here and there. So do all of these developments and all these advances and, and improvements in our technology. Does that mean that the Ford Nucleon may be closer to reality? Closer to reality? It can be if you're OK with five feet of steel or concrete shielding in your car. Otherwise, it's not going to happen. It's just like, you know, Can you imagine the car? It would be far, far worse than the car that that Homer Simpson made-up in, in that famous episode of The Simpsons where it was just a car that uses a nuclear reactor like this would just be ridiculous. So that we're not going to see anything like that. I think battery technology is more than enough for small applications like cars, but bigger stuff, bigger stuff. I think reactors will be will be in the mix. Well, the hope is too, Bob, that.

S: With their these niche applications like that, data centers and cargo ships and things like that, that will cause an economy of scale. Like I said, if you have factories cranking out SMRS then they might become cost effective for more general applications like just plugging into the grid creating these the hope in the.

B: Beginning Steve Wright was that if you create enough of these, it could really help, you know, decarbonize worldwide economy. But even, you know, powerful big SMRS, you know, 5 to 300 megawatts, they they calculate related, you would need 10s of thousands of them to really start making a difference. And I'm not sure you know how long it's going to. I think we'll be probably well past 2050 by the time, if ever we we could start making them and get some economies of scale like for that. I mean, yeah, it's scary to think, but it's still the idea. It's just fascinating. Doesn't have to be the solo.

S: Solution. But, you know, if no shipping and yeah, take a chunk out of out of the grid, that would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. Hundreds of pieces.

E: To this puzzle, yeah, yeah, Jay, it's who's.

B: That noisy time.

S: All right, guys, last week. I played this noisy.

U: I know, yeah. So that there's a lot.

J: Going on there, I know what that is. That is.

E: The world's first popcorn machine, built in 1884. Yeah, Which you?

J: Had to start.

E: Up with, you know, with diesel fuel or whale oil or something. And it popped like 8 kernels like at the end there it sounded like I thought. That that was the.

S: Sound of that's what happens after I put my quarters into the candy machine and I'm waiting for the candy to drop Yeah, well, we had some guesses so.

J: Visto Tutti wrote in. This guy's very busy and I feel very lucky when he when he emails me. So he said this one sounds like an ice maker, the mechanical part of the refrigerator that cracks ice cubes into a receptacle for drinks and such. Man, if you had that in your kitchen, I'd be pissed, right? That's a noisy freaking ice maker. That is not an ice maker, but they do make noise. So I hear what you're saying. Cooper Parish wrote in and said, howdy, here's my guess. Coin operated mechanism, 2 beeps of selection interface. A motor was pushing a ball down a long metal track on display inside a box. So he says it's a vending machine. I thought that was a good guess because it's basically what Steve said, yeah.

E: There's lots of noises.

J: There's, you know, you putting the coin in and you know, the thing turns and then the thing falls and then maybe an arm grabbed, whatever, right? There's all these different things. It's not a vending machine, but that was a good A listener named Derek Dunsmore wrote in and he said hi. I may finally know this one. As a hobbyist 3D designer, I recall watching a video of a man producing a small but functionally manned bumper car sized tank out of 3D printed materials. I believe this is the sound that vehicle made when the tank treads were moving over terrain during a trial run. I thought that was cool. I, you know, I like, I didn't know that someone, you know, 3D printed a, a tank that could move. I'm sure they had to put some type of motor in there. But anyway, this is not correct. But I would like to see the tank And we have a couple of closer guesses. So Gerard Steinbeck wrote first time guessing. That sounds like a, a plotter printer, a massive printer that uses pens or something to draw blueprints on big sheets of paper. So I, I think I've been around one of these and they definitely make lots of different kinds of noises and everything. This is not a plotter printer, though, but that was interesting, guests, Dan Tenhove said. I'm guessing that this is a recording of the inside of a VCR, and I know you have to be kind of older to know what a VCR is. Cara, do you know what a VCR is? I'm not that. Come.

C: On Of course I know what a VCR is. I was going to ask you if you. Knew what? A vending.

J: Machine I was born in 1980.

C: Three you guys, my entire like upbringing was with the VCR. You're a millennial. I'm I'm.

J: An elder I'm.

C: Two years away from the millennial cutoff, you have an.

J: Elder Millennial.

C: Elder millennial, so I remember.

E: When we were kids.

J: That Bob actually could repair VCRS. You know, the tape got caught in there. Whatever. Bob like was always, you know, tinkering around or whatever because he was really obsessed with taping Star Trek and Bruce Lee and Spider Man, which I was 100% behind. So yeah, they make different noises. There's things happening in the VCR, there's a lot, there's moving parts, you know, there's things that grab the tape and there's things that are happening. So I can, I can see that. I think that was a good guess, but that wasn't correct. I do have a winner and there were actually two people that that guessed pretty quickly. There were a lot of other guessers. But I'm going to tell you who the 1st 2 are. The the person who won and who submitted it first is Travis Warburton. And he said this is 100% a canister being sent out, a pneumatic tube system. He says the.

S: Beeps are probably.

J: The destination station being typed in. I'm a nurse at a hospital and use these everyday. And Madeleine Love also guessed correctly on that.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:19:31)

J: These are two new names to who's that noisy. So, yeah, that's basically what it is. I will remind you that a a young listener named Gertie sent this noisy in. So I wanted to thank her personally for doing that. Thank you so much. And yeah, essentially that's what it is. I mean, the person who's the people who recorded this, there was, you know, different, different use of the of this whole thing. But that's basically what's going on. Pneumatic systems are pretty cool. I remember that one of the banks that I used to used to use had one of the canisters get stuck. I guess the tube went underground for this one and it got stuck in there because somebody put in like $20 worth of coins. Wow. And it's too heavy.

US#00: Yeah, they had to dig it out.

J: And that was that for that pneumatic system. But Costco took backhoe and dug it.

E: Out. Yeah, they had to dig it out, Moly.

J: Moly Costco uses a pneumatic system and there there's there's pretty extensive ones out there, especially today you know with the modern technology they can make them pretty interesting. You still use them in the hospital for.

S: Sending blood samples to the lab? Yeah, they that's it.

J: There you go. I thought that tech was dead.

S: No, when you when you still have to. Physically move stuff around it. Yeah, if it's not broken.

C: Don't fix it. Yeah, like when you need blood immediately.

J: You put it in the in the pneumatic system, in a tube, in the pneumatic.

S: System tube I think it. Was open your.

J: Van No, you don't. Just. Yeah, you know, suck the blood. No, it doesn't work that way. No, I have a new noisy guys. This one was sent in by a listener named Ed Barrett.

E: Those all sound like wrong numbers. Yeah, there is a pranking kind of.

J: Vibe to that guys. If you think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org. Not a con 2025 guys is coming. We have a couple of months.

Interview with Adam Russell (1:21:32)

J: We're very excited and in fact, the person that we're interviewing this week is a special guest that we're going to have at Nana Console. Listen to the interview and please do consider coming because you're going to miss out on one. A hell of a good time with lots of music, lots of fun things that we're going to do. There are surprises. There are jigs and Jags. Steve is going to teach someone how to do Kung Fu. It's going to be awesome. Don't miss it. Not a con con, Evan. Not a con con. That's the website. That's the website con.

E: Dot com. All right. Thanks, Jay. All right. Well, let's go to that interview now.

U: We are joined now by.

S: Adam Russell. Adam, welcome to the Skeptics Guide. Hello there. Good to be here.

US#03: Now, Adam, you are a.

S: Musician the bassist for the group story of the year. I also understand you have a Star Wars podcast called thank the maker, but we wanted we wanted to chat with you because you're going to be joining us at nonacon. But tell us a little bit about yourself first. You tell us about your career. Yeah, I've, I've been of.

US#03: We were just. Talking about this offline, I've been with this band and this group of of guys the majority of my life. I mean, going back to the late 90s when I first started playing music. Saint Louis is a small scene. So we all kind of played in bands together, ended up as as this line up plus one other is no longer with us and released our first album in 2003. It's a big debut. You know, it was the just like perfect alignment of stars. We were so lucky to have the success we had then and over these years, these, you know, 25 years almost since then, we're riding the wave of the the 20 year cycle, the resurgence and our music kind of came back into into the public consciousness and we're on to, you know, another generation of fans and things are are in a a really fun, exciting place where we're lucky enough to have another chance. We've kind of threaded the needle down in it into this small group of bands who are still around and could still pull it off. And I'm a lucky guy. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, there's so many.

S: Sub sub genres of music these days you don't need to have like there's not like there's just this one bucket of musicians. It's you could survive in a really small niche. I mean, there's so you.

US#03: Look at that with anything. There's so many subcultures. You go onto social media and see people who have literally millions of followers that I've never heard of. I have no idea what they do. They just, but they have these communities, whether it's, you know, just on social media or somebody on the reality TV or any kind of artist. And it's wild to think that there are that many people on earth that each of us can succeed well enough with our little niche. Yeah, well, it's more than 8.

S: Billion people on the pants? Yeah, that'll do.

Voice-over: That'll work.

US#03: Adam, what is the style?

S: Of the band I think we would describe.

US#03: Ourselves most accurately as post hardcore. A lot of punk influence. Emo I think is the most like mainstream, most known title for this sub genre. But we have influence of just you know, 90's rock, metal, punk, everything. Good music. I'll call it good music.

E: It does touch on emo, although I would not necessarily peg it as such. However, in the early 2000s, that was kind of the the wave that carried a lot of groups forward into into the mainstream for sure. If you know the.

US#03: The Vans Warp tour, that sort of like moving window of that Venn diagram of of genres. That's what we fit into. Yeah, perfect. How does skepticism?

J: And your. Music, you know, connect to each other. I grew. I mean, science was my.

US#03: First passion. I grew up on science like any kid, pretty much. It was dinosaurs and then the space shuttle and the everything, you know, And in the 90s especially, like all of that was front and center. I went to space camp, you know, I was always at the Science Center and stuff like that in Saint Louis. And friendships were always kind of adjacent to those things. And music just happened to overlap. But you know, our guitar player and I are big Star Wars nerds. We all, we're all kind of into similar things and into science and I, I've always tried to make it part of anything that I do, whether it be like the Star Wars podcast or the band. And on our third album actually, we got pretty political and kind of got into social and other kind of topics in our second, third album lyrically. And we had a song, we had a few songs that were inspired by Carl Sagan, Pale Blue dot specifically, and we ended up using an excerpt from the Pale Blue dot as sort of an interlude, cut it together, it got the old audio tape and ran it into Pro Tools and chopped it up. And we actually had to, we had, you know, we had to get permission from the estate. So Andrian had to approve it and sent us an e-mail back, which was I still have, you know, buried somewhere in an inbox. It, it was like the peak of my life, you know, she wished us luck. She said, you know, I hope the album climbs the charts like a rocket into space or something like that. It was, it was amazing. So we've touched on that stuff here, there, but it's, it's always been more like personal stuff that you try to inject wherever you can, you know? Yeah, we we've worked with her.

J: In the past and like she is just amazingly generous that way. So I'm not surprised that you say that. Yeah, she's.

US#03: An Angel and how did you stumble across the?

E: Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Like I said, I've always been.

US#03: Into science. But when I really got into music in high school and went from being this like, you know, fairly intelligent kid who kind of coasted through elementary school, got into high school, discovered music, and then my grades just tanked and I, I got so off track. Music was the only thing that mattered to me. But once that mission was sort of accomplished, once we got signed and we, you know, it was happening, I found myself with all this free time and the spark kind of reignited my, my passion for science. And I just, I just went head first into reading and finding podcasts and everything. It was also about the time that, you know, at the end of high school, around teenage years, I realized my beliefs didn't align with what I was raised on. I was raised Catholic and realized I didn't, I didn't believe in God or any, any kind of metaphysical stuff like that. So I leaned it into science and then found, you know, through the the New Atheist movement and those folks that you know, many of which are questionable.

U: People at this point, but.

US#03: You know, listening to Dawkins interviews and things like that on point of inquiry and things like that, I, in discovering a podcast found you guys. I want to say it was maybe less than a year after Perry died. I was working on a DVD that we were editing and I had this long process of, of censoring, had to go through frame by frame and do all this stuff. So I spent a month solid at my desk with just visual stuff. And I needed something to listen to. So I ended up listening through your entire back catalogue and got fully caught up and just, you know, I, I don't think I've missed an episode since then. Since 2007, probably. Yeah, 2000. And.

E: Seven. Yeah, that's when Perry left us. Yeah. Yeah.

US#03: So. Yeah, that was the beginning. That's amazing.

J: I, you know, you, you must experience this like, you know, when you find out that people are into the work that you create and then, and then they sustain it, right? Like you what, like what you just said it like, it really surprises me that people can can do that with with podcasts because they can go on for a very long time, which, you know, at this point, there's a lot of them out there. So it's really, you know, it means a lot to me to think that people are are like just into the show to the point where they're going to they're going to keep going with us like we were saying before we started.

US#03: What you guys feel about what you've accomplished with your podcast? I I feel so similarly about our music and our band. I feel very lucky to have people still with us all after all these years. Adam, have you ever?

S: Been to a live skeptical conference before. Not a conference.

US#03: But pardon the pun. I did you know I was at one of. The live recordings and what was it? Phoenix. Phoenix, Yeah, Yeah, so. That's about as close as. I've come. All right, so. OK, well, you're not going.

S: To get laid. What I'm just going to let you know. Well, my wife's going to be there. So I.

J: Mean.

US#03: Jay, that's none of your.

C: Business, whether or not you get laid.

S: Adam, tell us about. LA strikes back. Yes, LA strikes. Back.

US#03: Is it's a fundraising initiative for the to support victims of the LA fires started with a handful of other folks who I know through the Star Wars community. Mike Forster, one of the Co hosts of of think the Maker and some other prop makers and folks who are members of the 501st Legion, the costuming group. A few of a few of the folks live in LA and have been directly affected by the fires. Actually, our producer and editor Jason is, He and his wife are living in a, a rental house right now. They, they were in Altadena. They didn't lose their house, but the whole place is uninhabitable. So we have a direct connection to people in LA who've been affected. And we of course, as we like to do in the community, in the Star Wars community, is band together to try to help folks out. So it we're, we're combining Star Wars and music, You know, I'm kind of bringing in the music side of it, trying to get donations from friends. It's a lot of, you know, custom designed helmets and different props and things and collectibles. Anything we can we can put on an auction to raise money. I'm donating a base. Some old Star Wars figures that I have from years ago, some kind of rare collectibles, the original.

E: Kenner, Boba Fett maybe don't have that.

US#03: Unfortunately, but it's too bad. Is that worth these days?

E: Is that 1,000,000 bucks that well there's different kinds. The one that's.

J: Super expensive, the prototype. It. Wasn't, Yeah, it was just a prototype that shot a little red missile out of the back. Like if you get one of those, you, you have a lot of money on your body. I'm sorry.

E: I digressed harmful of swallowed the rocket.

US#03: That's right.

E: Always. It's mostly props.

US#03: And things because again, the 50 first Lesion and other makers are contributing some really, really cool stuff. So we're doing the auction at the end of March. We pushed it back a little bit because we just want to give it some more time. But it's it's already going very well. The stuff we have lined up is I think it's going to it's going to pull some considerable funds. Obviously we're not going to solve the problem, but we're going to do our part. And you mentioned thank the maker.

E: Podcasts how did how did that come about? And what's what, what is that about? A It was a pandemic.

US#03: Project. We were all actually a friend. So Ryan Key, the singer of Yellowcard and I Yellowcard and Story of the Year have toured together off and on for years. We connected over Star Wars and at some point I, I realized I, I wanted to do a podcast. You know, I've been listening to you guys forever. I've listened to so many podcasts. I wanted to do something. And I was thinking, you know, a, a movie podcast, kind of a pop culture thing. Do all the classics that we grew up on. And then literally the night before we were about to record our first episode, Ryan and I, he said, and he called me up and said, look, man, you're going to kill me. But I have an idea. I kind of want to change up this idea. What if it's just about Star Wars? I was skeptical at first, but we ended up going with it and it ended up being perfect because there's this kind of, you know, there's a built in listening bass. And it ended up being something that we could, you know, find the slice of the Venn diagram where people who grew up on our music and people who grew up on Star Wars, especially the prequels, that actually lines up perfectly. You know, we just crossed 250 episodes recently, our fifth anniversary. And it's, you know, it's, it's not our full time job, but it's a, it's a paid hobby that works and it's, it's worth our time. And we created that. The main thing is that we've created this. Community around what we love about Star Wars. But you know, what do you think?

J: About Kathleen Kennedy supposedly not being a part of the brand anymore. I'm excited to see what the.

US#03: Next chapter is going to be but I'm already I'm already just worn out by all all the the bullshit negative celebration of her of her retirement because she's a legend. I mean, she she's been producing some of the best films of all time. Literally our entire lives. We're all in our mid 40s. I mean, starting with Poltergeist and ET. Like, she's been at the helm of all these incredible films. Maybe she wasn't the best studio head per SE. Who? Who can say? None of us have that skill set. Who are we to say that? But like, she's a legend. She should be praised for her, her long, illustrious career. And I have nothing but respect for her. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I agree.

J: With that, I, I can respect your, your perspective on it. I mean, I get the whole, let's not focus on the negativity and I have, you know, done what I think you have, which is like completely not be a part of any of it because I don't, I don't want to focus on that. And without getting into the whole thing because there's a lot to talk about. I mean, the bottom line is I'm a I'm a episode 4-5 and six guy and I probably won't be happy with much that comes after that. It is what it is. Like I I liked I liked a couple of the movies. I liked, you know, Andor and that's good enough. Like, and I think I recommend to people just watch the things that you like and let the other stuff, you know, just ignore it. Exactly. Let let.

US#03: People enjoy stuff, you know, just leave the negativity out of it. Yeah, yeah, I agree as well there.

E: Should be something someone can find somewhere in the Star Wars universe that they can enjoy and just concentrate on that for what it is.

C: Except Cara.

E: Everybody except Cara. Yeah.

US#03: I don't.

E: Know Cara knows a little.

J: Bit more about Star Wars now because of us I know a little bit more about.

C: Star Wars than I ever wanted to. It's called osmosis and.

J: Some star stars, but the difference.

C: Is I'm not one of these like Star Wars fans that's obsessed with Star Wars and then just shits all over it. I just don't care about Star Wars. I feel like that's different. I much.

US#03: Prefer that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: It's a different type. We. Don't have to all be. All about, of course. All the time. Yeah, of course.

E: Not no, no, but again. Venn diagram. It's a good example. You know how science, skepticism, Star Wars, you know, those those three circles definitely are here in this in this family. So yeah, well, Jay, I'll, I'll.

US#03: I'll re ask you officially right now. I'll put you on the spot on on the the air, so to speak. Would you like to join us on Thank the Maker, perhaps for an episode? Oh my God, how many times?

J: Can I be on the show?

US#03: Yeah. A.

Voice-over: 100% just e-mail me.

J: I mean, I will make myself available. I love to do that. Awesome. I have some ideas. So you're.

US#03: Going to come to.

J: Nauticon, you know, we've been very selective about who we let on that stage because we have a, you know, a core group of, of people that, that we work with, that we love to work with. But I mean, it's been, it's, it was a pretty easy decision to, to have you do it because first of all, Evan came out swinging about how awesome you are. But I mean, after I found out about the Star Wars thing, I'm like, this guy's awesome. Like, you know, like 100%. Cinched it, Yeah.

E: So we're going to have you join.

J: Us for a few of the bits that we're doing and I, I will give you a couple of reveals Right now. We haven't really gone into much detail, but we're doing something. George changed the name, didn't he? We used to call it Wu Tank. It's a pitching.

S: Woo pitching woo OK.

J: So the idea is that we are going to have the audience pitch to us things that revolve around pseudoscience as if they're like, they could be products. It could be a, you know, a cult pseudoscientific business.

S: Yeah, yeah. And we're going to judge.

J: It on whether or not we think it would work and everything like we'll be we're going to be very critical about it and we think that this is going to be funny because, you know, the audience is going to come up with some really, really crazy stuff, I'm sure. So you know, there's going to be a lot of the judges talking to each other and we're going to be, you know, doing the whole thing that like the show does. And I think that's going to be a lot of fun. And then we're going to do a bit called Never Seen It, which is, say, a improv comedy bit where you find out movies that people haven't seen that most people know about, and then you make them do a live read of a scene with somebody else.

US#03: Yes, yes, and you have to.

J: You know you have to be no context. No context, but you have. To be 100% committed, like you're doing this as if you're in the movie, you have to be dramatic and you have to have total buy in. Oh, I love this. I love. This so.

US#02: Much, yes, I think.

J: That one is going to be and people are going to really love it because it's going to go off the rails immediately. Hilarity will.

E: Ensue. Yes, this is great.

US#02: Yeah, so Adam, I think you're going to love.

J: This stuff, we're going to have a great time. You know, I'm really happy to welcome you to White Plains, NY. I mean, God, this is one of the cultural hubs of the United States. Adam's familiar with many.

E: Many White Plains ish types of towns throughout America. Yeah, basically it's a.

S: Airport, a train station and some hotels and a huge mall. One of the.

J: Biggest malls? That is a big mall, hey?

E: I'm a child of the 80s and.

US#03: 90s I love malls yeah, we did we did the.

J: Food court last time and it was great. So, so we, we, we did the 2023 Nauticon there. It was awesome. The hotel was awesome. We we basically took over the entire hotel. So I think I think this year is going to be even better than than last time. So we're really excited that you're, you know, you're coming and you know, I just want you to be prepared because you're going to have to do improv comedy with us. I'm ready. I'm prepared.

US#03: All right, so can Adam tell?

E: Us where we can find you and all your endeavors that you do so our audience can easily find you. Yeah, find the band.

US#03: At Story of the Year and all all the socials, I think we're still on Twitter X whatever the hell it's called, unfortunately. Thank the. Maker Pod. At think the maker pod on Instagram TikTok for now, blue sky, I think we're on there maybe at Adam the skull on all the things at thank the maker pod.com storyoftheyear.net and so on and so forth. All right, we look forward to.

S: Seeing you in May, Adam, same to you guys. Thanks again for.

US#03: Having me, Yep, good day. I got it man.

Science or Fiction (1:39:31)

Theme: None Item #1: Researchers successfully used mRNA which produces a tardigrade protein to protect surrounding tissue from radiation damage during cancer treatment. Item #2: Studying a new database of 8.9 million observations of 445 mammalian species found that only 39% had correct diel classification (what time of day they are active). Item #3: A new analysis finds that the vast majority of rogue planetary mass objects form as ejected planets rather than failed stars.

Answer	Item
Fiction	A new analysis finds that the vast majority of rogue planetary mass objects form as ejected planets rather than failed stars.
Science	Researchers successfully used mRNA which produces a tardigrade protein to protect surrounding tissue from radiation damage during cancer treatment.
Science	Studying a new database of 8.9 million observations of 445 mammalian species found that only 39% had correct diel classification (what time of day they are active).

Host	Result
Steve	sweep

Rogue	Guess
Jay	Researchers successfully used mRNA which produces a tardigrade protein to protect surrounding tissue from radiation damage during cancer treatment.
Evan	Studying a new database of 8.9 million observations of 445 mammalian species found that only 39% had correct diel classification (what time of day they are active).
Bob	Studying a new database of 8.9 million observations of 445 mammalian species found that only 39% had correct diel classification (what time of day they are active).
Cara	Studying a new database of 8.9 million observations of 445 mammalian species found that only 39% had correct diel classification (what time of day they are active).

U: It's time for.

US#02: Science. Or. Fiction.

U: Each week I come up with three.

S: Science News items or facts 2 genuine and one fictitious and then I challenge my panelists. Got Dicks. That's you guys to tell me which one is the fake Got three exciting news items this this week You ready? Yes, OK. Here we go. Item number one researchers successfully used mRNA, which produces a tardigrade protein, to protect surrounding tissue from radiation damage during cancer treatment. Item number two studying a new database of 8.9 million observations of 445 mammalian species, found that only 39% had correct deal classification. What time of day they are active? And on #3A new analysis finds that the vast majority of rogue planetary mass objects form as ejected planets rather than failed stars. Jay made a noise. Who did? Jay did? Jay gets to go first. All right. The first one here.

J: These researchers, they successfully used mRNA, which produces a tardigrade protein to protect surrounding tissue from radiation damage during cancer treatment. I have a lot to say about that one, Steve, because I remember I did specifically I did a news item where they they were, they tracked tardigrades that were attached to rockets that went into outer space. I remember that news.

E: Item Yeah, me too, and I remember.

J: Talking about this protein that they have that's it's covering their DNA and protects it from radiation coming in and messing it up. And this is exactly the kind of thing that I think you would make up. And we could do that though. Successfully used mRNA. To produce. But who did they successfully use it on? Steve? Well, since you're going first, I'll tell.

S: You this is a mouse study, not that it matters. Wait, so there are anti.

J: Anti radiation mice running around this planet now, Well, not running.

E: Around a laboratory and of course the.

S: Cancer treatment is radiation therapy, right? Yeah, that was. I hope that was obvious. All right, so this is how super.

J: Villains are made, by the way. OK, so I'm gonna put that one on the on the back burner for a second. The second one here, you're saying studying a new database of 80, I'm sorry, 8.9 million observations of 445,000,000 species found that only 39% had correct deal classification what time of day they are active. So only only 39% were correct and and saying when they're active during the day, Yeah. So in other words, like.

S: If an animal is categorized as nocturnal, this study found that 61% of the time they were not nocturnal. That's crazy if that's.

J: Real if that's legitimate, then it really, you know, what are these scientists and researchers doing like they're falling asleep at the wheel here while they're they're doing they made 8.9 million observations of 445 species and 30 and they were that wrong. That's a big mistake there right? That's bad. I don't like that and I hope that one is not science. The last one, a new analysis, finds that the vast majority of rogue planetary mass objects form as ejected planets rather than failed stars. OK. I mean I can you, can you expand?

B: On that one, Steve, a little. So you know what? A rogue.

S: Planet. A rogue? Yeah, of course. A rogue thing. It's roaming between the stars. It's not in orbit around a star. Not right, Right. So rogue planetary mass objects. Right. So these are not stars. They're big, but they're planetary mass. They're not stars. And so the question is, do these planetary mass objects that are rogue, do they form as failed stars or do they form as planets that then get ejected from their solar system? This analysis says that the that most of them are ejected planets, not failed stars. But you said that they're.

B: Planetary mass. So they by definition they would have to be planetary and not stellar. No, because they're.

S: Why planetary mass objects They're.

C: Big.

S: But they're not stars, right? So are they too small to be a star? Or are they just big planets? OK, like so you're talking?

B: Like Neptune type Jupiter gas to Jupiter. Yes, even bigger than Jupiter. But just not bigger than a failed star, OK. But not in.

S: Orbit.

C: They're they're rogue. They're. Yeah, they're.

S: So the question is.

J: You know, how does a planet get out of its own solar system, right? That's 'cause it needs, it needs to be, you know, I think the planets need that tight, you know, need to be around a star to form or at least that's, you know, oh boy, this is not an easy one, Steve. And nothing is sticking out. I am going to say, you know, the first one about the M RNA that produces the tardigrade protein. I mean, this is exactly what we were saying we hoped would happen, right? They, you know, and I could see them doing this. It makes sense. So I'm going to say that one is science. I'm going to say that the 39% here, you know, the 8.9 million observations that were made of these 445 mammalian species, like if they were that wrong, then something is really wrong. I don't think the number is 39%. I think it's a lot lower than that. Or you mean higher.

S: You know what I'm talking about. Yeah.

J: That's the fiction. OK. Evan Oh boy, I want this tardigrade.

E: Protein one to be science. Oh, gosh. Right, right, Jay, Of course. This is too good. Tardigrades are amazing little buggers, aren't they? Can't. Can't kill them. I really, you know my favorite word, I again, that's the one that can trap you right? You want it to be true. You don't kind of care, but at the same time you'll lose the game and then the 445,000,000 species 39% correct deal classification. I suppose that could be right. You know, it's more of a fine, you know, you know, make observations and over time you make more and more and more observations and you start concentrating on you can realize you were pretty far off the mark to begin with. I don't think there's a problem with that one per SE. And the last one about the rogue planetary planetary mass objects. The rogue ones ejected planets rather than failed stars. OK, I believe that. Oh, what the heck, I'll go with the tardigrade one. Because as fiction. Because when it's not, if it turns out to be science, then I my my sadness from losing the game will be overridden by my happiness. In that it was a fact. All right, Bob. Yeah.

B: Bob's going before me.

C: Yeah, I was hoping you'd go before.

B: Me, Jesus.

C: Tardigrade protein, huh?

B: I guess I, I, why wouldn't they use the, the, the code from what's the name of that bacteria? Radiodurans. This is a bacteria that could have its genome obliterated by radiation and then it just like puts itself back together. I think it's even harder. It's hardier than even a a tardigrade, but but tardigrades have some amazing, famously amazing resilience. So sure. I want that to be true too, so, so badly. Let's see so 45 S, 8.9 million observations of only 445 species. That's 20,000 observations per species. That's a lot and they still were that wrong. That's pretty dramatic. That's the.

S: Database they used to figure out that the older classifications were wrong, right? You understand what that says? I think so, yeah. You made you.

B: Made it sound like.

S: And they're still wrong after 8 No 8.9 million observations is what led them to, you know, based upon those observations, the existing deal classifications were only correct 39% of the time. All right? So that's not encouraging.

B: Let me look at this third one here. All right, so this one's interesting. So you've got, I mean, we've Steve, you, we've believed for years that there's more rogue planets ejected from solar systems then there are planets in orbit around a star, right? Isn't that kind of like many billions of these rogue planets for years that that's kind of been the consensus and he's not even not agreeing with me, but I know he would agree with me. So, so you're saying here that potentially these, some of these could be failed stars. I don't like, I don't like that. I like the idea of these, these rogue planets, just like, you know, I don't need a star, you know, Screw says they're.

S: Ejected planets. Not rogue stars, not failed stars. Just the idea of.

B: Potentially thinking that these were failed stars is is like I like the idea of the rogue planets it make it makes sense like you know, you know, screw those billionaire stars. I don't need them. I'm out on my own. I don't, I don't need those guys. And imagine the life forms that could have evolved on a exoplanet with no, with no star, no, with no, you know, no stellar universe could anything live.

US#00: Off of a OK, sorry plenty.

B: Plenty, plenty. First off, you've got, you know, microbes living under the ground because of the the heat of nuclear decay. That's just like, yeah, that absolutely can happen. But yeah, surface life, yeah, that's going to be that's going to be difficult for sure, but there still could definitely be life on those. I mean, we, you know, there's still plenty of heat inside the earth. So this one, that one makes sense to me. All right, I'm I'm going to say that the 39% correct 1 something yeah, I'll just whatever, I'll throw my coin down on that and say that's fiction. I don't know any of these could potentially be except the third one, the.

C: Brothers are saying it's the mammalian classification Evan the tardigrade.

E: Yeah, I want the tardigrades. For my own selfish, Yeah. Who do I go with?

B: All right.

C: Cara, don't just.

E: Try to or.

B: The road planets you.

E: Can do the road planets I could.

C: Yeah, let's. See, let's see the. Tardigrade one I I think could be true. At least somebody probably researched that they were like, oh, these are radiation resistant, maybe we can take something from them and put it in tissue and it doesn't say in people, it says in tissue. So this could have been in vitro. I said it was. AI said it was a mice.

S: Rice. Oh, in mice. OK, Yeah.

C: Yeah, totally happened in mice. No, I don't. I don't know why everybody is as bothered by this database 1 though. Like I'm not bothered by any of them. OK, So what you're saying is that a new database where they had tons of observations. What I'm reading this as as the first time they did a big data analysis of this, they realized that all of their boots on the ground, you know, non comparison data was kind of wrong. And like, that doesn't like naturalistic data is just, oh, I'm, I'm standing out in the forest and I'm writing down how many of these creatures I see. But if they were using like camera traps or like CCTV or some way or like satellite imaging, yeah, thermal imaging to get like big data, I could see them being way off. You know, animals are famously very good at evading human observation. So this one doesn't bother me at all. Now the rogue planet one, I have no idea. It must be the fiction by.

E: Process of elimination, do you? I want I mean the other.

C: Two don't bother me, this one. But Bob says this one doesn't bother him and I have to. They all have. My own brain I. Don't know anything about. So OK, I guess in an attempt not to sweep Steve, I'm going to be I'm going to use strategic here and I'm going to say it was it's that they're not rogue planetary or they're not ejected planets. They are failed stars or something different just to screw.

S: Me out of it. That's your strategy, Okay.

Voice-over: I got. You all right? Well.

S: You're spread out, which means I did my job this week and I'll take them in order. Take them in order, but you didn't do the job as good.

B: As you could have, please. All right.

S: You guys were were. Confused and befuddled, here we go. I remember 1 researchers successfully used mRNA, which produces a tardigrade protein, to protect surrounding tissue from radiation damage during cancer treatment. You all want this one to be correct, but Evan thinks it's the fiction and I still want it to be correct.

E: And this one.

S: Is say it science?

B: This is.

S: Oh yes.

B: It's just super cool.

S: I lose.

E: Yeah.

S: So. Well, I'll tell you so.

U: Yeah.

S: So it's pretty much what it says. They identify the protein that binds to DNA and protects the DNA from breaking apart due to radiation. They made, you know, the mRNA that produces that protein. They injected it into the tissue of mice. They then gave them radiation therapy for their cancer because they actually had cancer. The mice that they were studying and the mRNA produced tardigrade protein, protected the surrounding tissue from radiation damage. They did not get as much DNA damage from the radiation. The idea here is that the mRNA is only going to last for a short amount of time. So it'll produce a bunch of the tardigrade protein. You give the radiation therapy and then within a couple weeks it's gone, you know, so it doesn't have any long lasting effects. And that's basically what they found. So the research was successful. Obviously, this is a long way away from human treatments, you know, doing. Yeah, But extrapolate that. That's pretty.

B: Could be potentially pretty awesome, but it could be hell.

S: Yeah, absolutely. So this is a good proof of concept, you know, in an animal model and very, very encouraging. Radio protection of healthy tissue by a nanoparticle delivered mRNA encoding for a damage suppressor protein found in tardigrades. Cool study. All right, let's go on to #2 studying a new database of 8.9 million observations of 445 mammalian species found that only 39% had correct deal classification. What time of day they are active? Bob and Jay? You think this one is the fiction, Cara? And everyone thinks this one is science and this one is science? Sorry guys. Hey, hey, Cara's strategy. Unfortunately, oh, it worked.

E: Yeah, failed. Stars, that sucks.

S: Hang on. Bob, hang on. Hold your hold your horses. Hold your fire.

E: So hurry up.

S: So yeah. As. I would say yeah, mammals next Cara.

E: You pretty much are correct.

S: You know a. Lot of the classifications were based on field observations and a lot of them were just too few field observations. So can anyone name the four most common deal classifications? Nocturnal.

C: Diurnal, crepuscular, and the one I don't know, the one you know, cathemeral.

S: Is that the opposite?

C: One's Dawn 1 stuff. I never heard of that one Cathemaral.

S: Means that they're active during multiple phases throughout the day. OK, so it's.

C: A catch all? Yeah, it's kind of a catch all.

S: And what they found was a couple of things. One was that a lot of the classifications that we had were not correct, but also that there's a lot more variability than than we previously assumed though.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:54:43)

"One of the few universal characteristics is a healthy skepticism toward unverified speculations. These are regarded as topics for conversation until tests can be devised. Only then do they attain the dignity of subjects for investigation."  – Edwin Hubbel, The Realm of the Nebulae (Yale University Press: 1936), (description of author)

S: So they in other words like a quote UN quote, nocturnal animal is active during the day quite a bit. So a lot more of the animals were cathemeral than strictly doctrinal or strictly diurnal. That makes more sense that.

C: Makes more sense. Doesn't surprise me, yeah.

S: So. Yeah, but it's interesting. And it was a massive database, you know which of course that's as Cara was saying that's of course they they would revise the the less, you know, accurate information. This was a global network representing 38 countries leveraged 8.9 million observations. So they up they updated our deal classifications. Quite a deal. OK, that means that a new analysis finds that the vast majority of rogue planet of rogue planetary mass objects form as ejected planets rather than failed stars is the fiction wow. But they're not failed stars either. This is kind of a trick. It's neither. Oh, what?

C: Why are we talking about?

B: Oh, that's well. OK. So.

S: What else is there? Are they?

B: Comets.

C: What? I'm confused right SO.

S: Basically, there's two main ways that stuff gets made, right? You either get made as a star, meaning a collapsing disk of material, or you form as a planet, which is an accretion of material around a star, right? Those are the two basic ways these that worlds get made. And the question was always that these for these rogue planetary mass objects, which PM OS are generally like bigger than Jupiter, but small, but not big enough to become a star, right? And there's a lot of them out there. And so the, and Bob, you're right, a lot of a lot. There's probably more rogue planets than there are planets around stars. Oh, they still believe that. Oh.

B: Yeah, yeah, this is, This is not.

S: Impact that is because these are like in a, these are not just anything that's a planet. This is the planetary mass. Objects are a specific range. Again, they're they tend to be large, but not Suns. What they found was that they form by a third newly discovered mechanism. That's neither like stars or planets, and it's complicated. But what they found was they found a bunch of them forming in the same location. What they what seems to be happening is that it's an interaction between two planetary discs that are forming these like a a tidal bridge, as they say. There's like a tidal bridge between these two, encountering circumstellar discs that then produce these highly productive clusters of material that spits it out, that spits out these PM OS, these free flow like a baseball going.

B: Through a pitching machine, you got these. Two wheels, I guess so, yeah, that's a good analogy, I guess.

S: SO22 circumstellar.

B: Disks around one star? No, I think no.

S: No, in a like a in a cluster. Like in a cloud of a star forming region. Neat. Yeah, but if it's a circumstellar.

B: Disk and there is a star there already, but it's not a rounded star.

S: It's not an orbit around a star, it's a. It's a young star cluster, so is it like a binary? System.

C: I'm confused. Protostar No. No.

E: It's.

S: So you have a star, a cluster of stars, right? So a star forming cluster. So there's a lot of young stars in forming in this one region because there's a giant, you know, gas cloud of gas there and lots of stars are forming. But in that cloud, there can also be these circumstellar disks that are like, you know, forming stars. But if they get close together, they form these tidal bridges that then spit out a bunch of these PM OS. Does that make sense? Fascinating. Yeah.

U: Yeah.

B: So, but I think Circumstellar is kind of just like there.

S: That's the name of the discs, but that's the that's. So this is, this would be a, this is a new, a new mechanism by which these kinds of objects can be formed. It's not formed as a sun or as a planet. It's it's own thing. Which is weird, but cool. Bob, we learned something.

E: You did? Yeah. That's that's really.

B: A third way that sounds. That's really cool. I want to read up on that one. That's that's fascinating. And Cara figured it all out.

E: Sure thing with.

S: Without AI Cara.

E: Backed into.

S: That one, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no.

E: She took the reins and. Commanded her way to victory. All right, Evan.

S: Give us a quote, one of the few universal.

E: Characteristics is a healthy skepticism towards unverified speculations. These are regarded as topics for conversation until tests can be devised. Only then do they attain the dignity of subjects for investigation. That was written by Edwin Hubble in an article called The Realm of the Nebula in 1936. Edwin Hubble, right? He's one of the. I heard he was awesome man.

B: I saw. His locker.

C: Oh yeah.

E: Yeah, it's here at Mount.

C: Wilson in Mount Wilson, if you go and yeah, if you go and observe at the telescope at Mount Wilson, Hubble's locker is like still down in the bottom. Holy moly. Yeah.

E: I was there, yeah, I saw it.

S: There was also like his telescope, his microscope or something. It was there, I don't know, and his lunch like some stuff kind.

E: Of old now.

C: Yeah, it's. Like an old apple.

S: All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week. Sure man. Got it. Thanks.

B: Doctor and until next.

S: Week This is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

U: Skeptics Guide to the Universe.