SGU Episode 1058

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SGU Episode 1058
October 18th 2025

"Radiant sun showcasing sunspots, a glimpse into our dynamic solar system!"

SGU 1057                      SGU 1059

Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella

B: Bob Novella

C: Cara Santa Maria

J: Jay Novella

E: Evan Bernstein

Quote of the Week

“It is strange to reflect how much energy is thrown away in attempting to know the unknowable.”

— Joseph Barber Lightfoot

Links
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Show Notes
SGU Forum


Intro

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

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, October 16th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody. Cara Santa Maria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey guys. And Evan Bernstein.

E: Hi everyone.

S: How's everyone doing? Nice, not bad. Nice, you guys. Do you guys chase comets? Like do you pay attention to our comets or in the sky?

E: Sure, of course. Does it everybody? Hit my news feed and yeah, I take a.

S: Look, we got a couple in October. They're, you know, they're gonna be barely visible.

E: Yeah, not exactly Hale, Bopp or Haley's.

S: Haley's comment? Although don't get me started with Haley.

E: 'S don't even start.

S: Change the subject right now.

E: Haley's comments a controversial thing.

S: We had the worst viewing in 2000 years in your lifetime, that's all.

E: But that's OK.

B: You just need to be.

E: Alive 79 years.

B: Steve and I Steve and I are still destroyed over that in the mid 80s Oh my.

E: Gosh, I didn't realize it was a trigger moment. I'm so sorry, I apologize.

B: Think about it, Think about it. How iconic. The most comic comet ever, Halley's Comet. It's coming. We're like ready for it. And it's like, Oh yeah, not only is it ridiculously far away this time, it's also the weather sucks. So it's like double slap, cosmic slap to the face.

E: No comment for you.

S: But we're not going to talk about it, Devin. But but Comet Lemon, which is. Comet Lemon. Is getting that it had its IT was. It had its southern hemisphere viewing and now it's transitioning to the northern hemisphere. It will climb higher and higher above the horizon and the end of October will be good viewing. However, from what I'm reading it's only going to be naked eye visible if you are in a dark sky location, which we are definitely not.

C: Nor am I here in LA, Yeah.

S: Dang, so about binoculars. You whip out your binoculars. You should be able to see it above the horizon.

E: Yeah, just get to the right horizon and have nothing in front of you and your binoculars. I guess you'll be all right.

C: Yeah, horizon viewing is always really difficult.

S: It's always really.

C: Difficult and challenging.

S: I haven't had in my life a naked eye visible, whoa, way above the horizon, Gorgeous giant comet, right? I just haven't seen. I haven't had my quintessential comet experience.

E: So Hale Bopp was not that Steve, because we did saw.

S: It was this little thing. It was no.

C: Is it as bright as like the ISS? Like does it look like the ISS or is it?

B: No, it was better than that.

C: Way better.

S: Because it had a tail. You can see the tail.

C: Yeah, that's, that's cool. I've never had anything. I mean, the closest I've had are like meteor showers, but definitely never seen a comment. That's cool.

B: Yeah, but yeah, but you'll probably make the next Haley's, I think.

C: OK, maybe.

B: Maybe we never know.

J: And Cara? Cara promised me that you'll remember us, right?

C: That's right, like I'm I'm about to have my Hitchhiker's Guide birthday and it's depressing me 40. 2.

E: That's right, how your character you're a nice week when you're listening. To this right?

C: Yeah, it'll be this Sunday, Yeah.

E: Sunday OK, day before all.

C: Right. But I guess that's like, that's an exciting one. Hitchhiker's Guide. Yeah, yeah. I'm. Sure.

E: And and Steve, you're particular to even numbers rather than odd numbers, right.

C: So. It's a nice that's going.

S: I wouldn't even number bias, Yeah.

C: But what about fives? We've talked about this, right? Five fives are good too, right? Yeah, they're even in their way.

S: It's all just a symmetry thing.

C: I yeah, yeah, yeah.

J: But no number is cooler than a #5 What? Yeah, you think so? Hell yeah, 5 is the best freaking number.

S: No way 12 is much better than 50.

C: Interesting 42.

J: 42 is fine, but that's a made-up special.

C: Number. Oh really? But 5 isn't.

J: You know what I meant, God.

C: I. Love it.

E: 13's pretty awesome. 13 Yeah, I I I do have a 13.

C: Bias 13 is that like triggering for you? Steve 13 is like all the bad.

S: Things no 13 for a skeptic. 13 is like your bad ass number.

C: Yeah, it's funny. It's like a.

S: Countercultural number. It's like you're.

E: Gonna be uniform number, you're gonna wear 13.

C: Yeah, but 13 is definitely like odd and unbalanced and doesn't for crime. Crime.

S: Yeah, I loved.

E: Yeah, that's a just. More reasons to love it. Yeah, I agree there's a lot of reasons to like 13. It's the first teen.

S: But 12 is very useful, whether it's 12 months in a year, it's 12 inches in a foot.

C: Yeah, very useful if you're on, Yeah, the weird measurement systems that we use here in the US.

E: 12D12 and. A die is a perfect solid.

J: Evan, you made me think of something like, so this the teen thing, Why doesn't it start with 11? Because it's the double digits numbers, right? Like what's the what is so special about when we get the 13? What the hell does teen even mean?

E: Right. Why isn't it?

C: Well, it. Is in other languages on southeast do SE tres E cathorse like yeah, we just do it weird. Also, I mean, while we're on the subject, 12 months, but we had to do like 10 for 12/11 for for or sorry, 9 for 11. I know, but we should have added them to the end, not the beginning.

S: Right. Well.

C: That would have made a lot more sense, so.

S: We added in the middle.

E: Yeah, December.

C: We should have should.

S: Have did the names in August? Like who do you?

E: Believe it's July and.

C: Julio and August. Augustus. But we they should have changed the names then.

S: Yeah, then you have October. I don't disagree.

C: Make November and December, July and August. When you do this right and then all the. Yeah. I guess people just weren't very literate then. Yeah. All right.

S: Talk about too late. They they forgot to make zero the first year, so now we're stuck with that problem.

B: Oh my God. That don't don't bring back that can of worms. Ohh, that year 2000 or 2000?

E: 1/2. 1000 ohh my that took a whole year to figure out. Basically I.

C: Saw a whole new conspiracy theory the other day. I mean not to like beat this into the ground but my friend sent me on Instagram this whole new conspiracy theory. The years 614 to 911 might never have existed. Some historians claim the Middle Ages added 300 fake years. Tell that to. Radiocarbon data, yeah. If that's true, we're living in 1726, not 2026. And that's exactly what I said to him. I was like, well, we can measure how old things like, especially things that are only that old.

S: I mean, we have a lot of records from the Middle Ages.

C: Yeah, and they just made-up 300. Well, not a lot happened in those 300 years. Weird. I wonder if there. Was my gap of ignorance. Depends where you were.

E: 300 years, therefore.

J: Hey Bob, I didn't realize that so many things like science related things piss you off. Like we, we should make like a.

E: Oh, that's a segment.

J: We should make a coffee book like a, you know, like a coffee table book of like science. Facts that piss Bob off.

Voice-over: Yeah.

J: And of course, you'd be featured on the cover, like looking really pissed off while you're looking at clouds in the sky.

B: Shaking your fist? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love it. I like this idea. Let's let's have a meeting.

C: Yeah, things that piss off Bob. Science Edition.

S: Scientific pet peeves.

J: Steve will be on page 13.

News Items

Why People Believe Misinformation (07:11)

S: All right, well, let's dig into our news items. Cara, you're going to get us started with another item about misinformation.

C: Oh, and this one is especially interesting to me. It's one that I struggle to communicate about because I'm still working on engaging in my own paradigm shift to see this news item through the lens of the psychologist who authored it. So there is a new study that was published called Symbolic show of strength, a predictor of risk perception and belief in misinformation. And then there was a really good right around in the conversation just yesterday by two of the authors, so Randy Stein from Cal Poly Pomona and Abraham Ruchek, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right from Cal State Northridge. And so their argument and they, they studied this construct, I guess you could say during the COVID-19 pandemic, this whole conversation is going to be about this idea called symbolic strength during COVID. They wanted to understand why are people believing, not just spreading, but believing super bizarre misinformation, misinformation that's like demonstrably, demonstrably false. Because we talk about this a lot on the show, right? That people believe weird stuff. And sometimes it's because their beliefs are really entrenched or because it might shatter their worldview or whatever. But on the farthest fringes, one of the things that still bugs me, and I wonder how you guys feel about this, is when people hook, line and sinker, fall for things where there's overt evidence right in front of their faces. And they're like, Nope, don't believe it, Just don't believe it. Just want to talk about this. And it's like, what is that phenomenon? What is going on in their brains?

S: Right, Yeah, I've I encountered that in certain people, like in the comments of my blog for example. I've called that selectively gullible. Because these people are not. Entirely generally gullible. They are gullible for claims that align with their belief system, their ideology, their tribe.

US#09: Cow.

S: Yeah, not just not necessarily. Just even the sacred crowds, like sacred cows. This aligns with my political team. Therefore, I believe it, no matter how dumb or transparently wrong it is.

US#01: Very dangerous.

C: And So what these researchers claim is that it goes beyond their tribe, it goes beyond their political leanings or their ideology, and it goes beyond gullibility. And so This is why I think this is such an interesting in some ways, it's a paradigm shift in the way that we think because we as skeptics, we live in a world of truth, of facts, of science, of reality. And to put yourself in the mindset of somebody who doesn't think that way is difficult. But I think it's necessary to understand their hypothesis here. So they study political psychology. They're social psychologists. They're interested in questions about how people think about reality. And during COVID, they surveyed 5535 people across 8 different countries, and they wanted to figure out why do they believe in really bizarre COVID-19 misinformation, like false claims about 5G causing COVID? They found that their strongest predictor of whether somebody believed in this type of misinformation was not how they felt about COVID-19 in general. It was not their thinking style, and it wasn't even their politics. It was a construct that they are calling symbolic strength and weakness. And what that is, is whether somebody would appear to the outside world through their perception to fend off or give in to untoward influence. How strong are they in their convictions? How much are they willing to look even in the face of something that's false and say, this is what I believe, I don't care what you think. And it's a really, really interesting construct. So they, you know, measured on a scale of how much people agreed with sentences. And this might illustrate it a little bit better. Things like, quote, following coronavirus prevention guidelines means you have backed down or, quote, continuous coronavirus coverage in the media is a sign we are losing. So what they kind of how they interpret it is that people who respond positively to statements like that, they feel like they're winning by endorsing misinformation because when they do that, they're showing, quote, the enemy, whatever ineffable thing that is because there's not a singular political leaning that would describe this as we know. We've seen it on the left and on the right. Now it's becoming more of a right wing talking point. But historically, we saw kind of like, health misinformation heavily on the left. But doing so could, like, show the enemy that, you know, they're not going to gain ground. And so this is where things get interesting, right? They say when meaning is symbolic, not factual. So they liken this unto psychological warfare. And have we talked about that much on the show before? Psychological warfare, like psyops, not directly propaganda, you know? Yeah. And we've seen it throughout historical conflicts. We can point to really obvious examples during the Cold War, for example, but also during World War 2, during Vietnam. We can uncover really obvious examples that are well documented within our own military, but definitely within Axis military or within like Russian military. This idea of sort of winning hearts and minds through rhetoric as opposed to bombs, for example, and changing the way people think about things and turning them against, you know, certain ideological stances, for example, or, or whole cultures or countries. So they, they kind of liken it unto this concept of psychological warfare, for example, like vaccination or masking or social distancing at the time. They could be seen as they word it, as a symbolic risk that could weaken 1 psychologically, even if they literally benefit them physically, right? Even if they are better, more healthy, more well, by engaging in these practices, they're psychologically weak. They're weak minded because they're following the deep state or they're following, you know, whatever kind of name they want to use for them, for the enemy. And so when they were looking at this study, they, you know, they found a strong correlation. They actually did regression analysis and they found that this concept, right, symbolic strength, seem to have the most variance over whether somebody would kind of say, I believe in this thing even when it's like overtly not true. But they wanted to push it a little bit further and say, is this just a phenomenon with COVID or can we apply this to other things? So they decided to take that same sort of paradigm and apply it to crypto. So they measured whether people saw crypto as a form of signaling independence from the traditional financial systems that we have. And they found that the same people who endorsed a lot of claims about needing to be separate from traditional finance were more likely to be believe in other kinds of misinformation, other kinds of conspiracies and really bizarre ones like, well, not bizarre, but we've talked about this a lot, like the government's concealing evidence of, you know, aliens or whatever. And they found that they also saw other strong associations with this mindset, namely authoritarian attitudes and support for autocratic governments. And so they're wondering if there's a common thread here that could explain why authoritarian leaders tend to be so effective when they use overt misinformation because there are a certain segment of a population who symbolically want to show that they're psychologically quote, strong, not weak. By saying I believe him. He has the answer. You know, all of these authorities, all of these other groups, they're, they're misleading you. And and so, you know, they talk a little bit about how this relates to what's happening today. Like for example, the August 2025 claim by by Trump that crime in Washington was at an all time high. You guys saw the media was like, no, it's not like they're just like so many think pieces and like Fact Check pieces that were like, no, it's not. But still you see people going, yes, it is, yes, it is. You know, he knows I don't, I don't care what the data show. They talk about the the concept of like, you know, edge Lords. You guys have heard that term before, just sort of trolls online, but trolls that are specifically contrarian that there's this interesting thing that happens where people like Trump or people like edge Lords on the Internet, even though they are pushing narratives that are overtly and demonstrably false, there's a Sheen about them that they're more quote authentic, right? That they're just, they're just telling their truth. They're just saying what's real or what's on their mind or you know, what people don't want you to know. And and it can have real consequences, as we know. So, so sort of they closeout with with, you know, the conversation that a lot of researchers do, which is this is a construct and we're trying to name and make sense of a phenomenon, but could it be something else or, you know, are there some limitations here? And they were saying, you know, maybe sometimes that it's true that these symbolic beliefs, that's what they keep calling them, right? They're not true beliefs. They're symbolic beliefs ultimately are endorsed and continue. Like, why do they keep going? But because, like downstream, they do have, you know, benefits for people like they're they stand as good loyalty tests or a fake it till you make it long game is what they call it that eventually does become a reality. It makes me wonder or it makes me struggle with this idea that there are individuals in power now who have been pushing this rhetoric for so long and ultimately are, I don't know, have a hand in the financial problems that that, you know, have incurred that then made that a reality that there is this sort of fake it till you make it long game. So so it's an interesting question, right? Like are these symbolic beliefs happening simply because some people have this type of mindset? It doesn't appear to be a thinking style per SE. It doesn't appear to be a a very particular political stance. It what appears even more than those things is an A need and intention, a maybe even a personality trait or or yeah, if we could dig into that.

S: Can't be cultural too.

C: Yeah, it can't be cultural. I mean, they looked across 8 or it can be cultural, but it's not specific to one culture, right? Because they looked across 8 countries when they did this study and they saw this, you know, kind of holding true across these different eight countries.

S: But it kind of reminds me a lot of how a lot of religions operate, right, where having faith is a virtue. And the more almost like the more untrue the thing that you're having faith in or the.

C: More test your faith.

S: The more radical it is, the more extreme it is, the more virtuous it is to believe in it. It's about the belief, It's not about whether it's true.

C: Absolutely.

E: Take it to an extreme. You get people drinking bleach. Because.

C: Oh yeah, you know, yeah.

E: Things and insane things.

C: Or literally drinking kool-aid that will, you know, spike to kool-aid that will kill them. Yeah. And I just want to kind of close with, it's so funny that I woke up early this morning and I watched the newest South Park. I don't know if you guys are watching this season, but it's brilliant. And I watched the newest South Park and it was all about how the principle of South Park Elementary was sort of, I mean, it was also about how Peter Teal knows about the Antichrist, but it was about how the principle of South Park was basically like puffing his chest up against Jesus. Who is the new guidance counselor at the elementary school about whether or not he's like, he's like, whoa, you questioning my faith, bro? Come on, let's throw down, bro. And it's so funny, like to Jesus and it's so funny. And it's a perfect kind of, you know, extreme example of this mindset. And and don't get me wrong that the researchers do say if this sounds like an edge case, like if it sounds very extreme, it is. This was by no means the dominant group that they studied, but there were continuously a small. And reliable, you know, sliver of this sample that they looked at who do tend to prioritize what they're calling symbolic strength. And so I think it's important that we all start to shift a little bit our perspective and our paradigm when we are talking to people who appear to be completely disconnected from reality, that continuing to show them facts is actually, we've talked about this, right? To make them dig in their heels, counterproductive, all that. But this helps explain why. And there may be new ways to appeal to these individuals. Maybe the less we care about their viewpoints, the less that their viewpoints feel relevant. Like whatever, everybody has their thoughts and feelings and OK, fine, I don't care. Like maybe that type of approach would kind of take the power away from that symbolic strength a little bit. I don't know.

S: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of an open scenario in my opinion. And I do think that even though this may be a minority, I think this style, this intellectual style is on the ascension. And this is, I think wrapped up in the post truth world. You know, that we're heading towards where whether or not something is true is not the primary, primary importance to too many people right there. There's way too many sources of plausible deniability of alternative sources of information. And sometimes, you know, again, engaging with people in the public about a lot of these topics that we talk about. Some people, whether or not something is true is really irrelevant. Like it doesn't even enter into their calculation when they're thinking about it.

C: And we've been focused for so long on the fact that the truth is irrelevant to these people. But what I love about it, which is kind of like a negative view, but what I love about what these researchers did is they they were like, yeah, but what is relevant to them and what they identified was a show of symbolic strength is what is most relevant. And so if you take that strength away and you take that power away, perhaps there is some room there to to change attitudes. I don't know but or.

S: At least what you're dealing with.

C: Exactly. But as long as we're just fighting against the fact, we're always like, oh, truth doesn't matter to these people. Truth doesn't matter to these people. But we don't identify what does matter. I do think that it's a lesson in beating our heads against the wall.

S: The other approach is, and we've talked about this in various contexts, is to 1st you have to get people to care about the truth until you have that as a commonality right.

C: Yeah, but but what if, by definition, caring about the truth is a show of weakness, so you're not going to get there? Well, I.

S: Think understanding that that's the psychological phenomenon might help you get them to the point where they will prioritize truth to some extent. Because if you don't have that as common ground, everything else is irrelevant, right then talking about that logic or whatever.

C: But ultimately, you know, that might be a long game if we're talking about because I think the other thing that these researchers do so beautifully is they connect this to what is happening in the real world, to connect this to authoritarianism. Yeah. And if we're talking about. Yeah, it it does, right?

S: Authoritarianism leads, makes you vulnerable to authoritarians, which we, Yeah, we've, we've looked at this from different angles before as well. Like whenever you have a situation in which something other than facts and evidence and logic and truth is the most important, the con artists come out of the woodwork. And that includes authoritarians. They know how to exploit people who are.

US#09: Some of the best.

S: At yeah, yeah. If you're if you will believe anything that is not mainstream, that makes you predictable and easy to manipulate, ironically so you become the sheeple that you condemn because you become super easy to manipulate and we.

C: But you don't see it that way because you see that strongman as the ultimate source of strength. And that's what matters most to you. Yeah. And so, and, and so I just, I, I actually, you know, no financial stake in this at all. But like, I recommend folks like watch that episode of South Park because it's it's like Trey Parker and Matt Stone read this story. Sometimes they.

S: Get more exactly right about stuff.

C: Yeah, or, or they just. They tapped into the exact same thing these researchers tapped into without, you know, having a name for the construct. And it's such a beautiful kind of take it to its extreme so that it's so obvious, right? But so every character in it is, is doing exactly that. They're showing their symbolic strength in the face of reality.

B: Steve, you, you mentioned something I think you might need to change and you say, and I've heard you say it a million times, are we sliding towards a post truth society, right. I mean, wouldn't you agree that we're basically there now?

S: Well, it's all relative. It's not a black or white, right. It's just a matter of it could always get worse. And I, I just mean we've moved in that the, the pendulum has swung in that direction. I think it is swinging in that direction.

C: Yeah, that's, yeah. That's the direction we're moving, not the other direction, whether we.

B: Right.

C: Yeah. What does it mean to have moved there? I mean, we have a leader read.

B: The news. Read the news. Exactly that's. What it means we are there.

C: Yeah.

B: Hello, everyone. We're there. Yeah.

C: And we'll keep going and, and sadly, there's more room to keep going there, right?

S: Yeah. All right. Thanks, Cara. Yep, Jay, give us the latest on the measles.

Measles on the Rise (26:00)

J: Yeah, I mean, you know, is.

E: It is it still a virus?

C: I mean, you know.

J: It's, you know, following up Cara's, you know, depressing situation. We got a little bit more of that, but don't worry guys, because who's that noisy is going to cheer you right back up.

S: Good. So wait for that.

J: So I, I titled this segment Steve US measles is back and it's worse than you think. And it's worse than you think, guys.

E: Worse than I. So I think it's not good. It's.

J: Worse, we go back to the year 2000. Is that from a flock of the Flight of the Conchords? Remember when they were the robots? Yeah.

C: Oh yeah. In the distant future, the year 2000. Is the year 2000?

J: Yeah, OK. I just want to throw that. All right. So if we if we click back to the year 2000s, measles was officially eliminated in the United States. The definition of elimination in this in this concept here is that it means that there was no continuous domestic transmission of measles for at least 12 months at a time. So in general very, very good status when it comes to this disease. That status was achieved after what it was decades of MMR control, basically following vaccine roll out since 1963. So this drove case is way, way down by more than 95% within a few years. And now we're in 2025 and as most of you know, measles are coming back. They are coming back strong though. And it's it's going to scare you how how strong this is. The case counts are already topping previous surges and outbreaks are popping up in multiple states. And the root cause, it isn't a new, you know, pathogen. It isn't, you know, a new version of the measles. It's gaps in vaccine coverage and public health infrastructure essentially failing to keep up because of funding and lots of other stuff. According to the CDC, 2025 has already seen over. How many cases, guys, do you think we've seen in 2025?

E: In the country.

J: Yeah, just in the US, 1500. Oh wow. Yep. Oh my God, these are confirmed measles cases.

C: No.

J: And roughly 86% of those cases are tied to clearly defined outbreaks. And three deaths have been confirmed so far, including two young children. In Texas, hospital rates are climbing. We have about 12% of patients ending up in the hospital care. And we've crossed into territory that we thought we would hopefully never happen again, right? We, you know, we feel like, hey, we've achieved this goal. We know how to do it. What could possibly ruin this status that we've achieved? Well, the CDC reports 1596 confirmed measle cases in the United States going to October 14th. So roughly what you know 2 days ago as as we record this versus 285 for all of 2024. Now the comparison of those two numbers, 1596 to 285 is the first giant red flag that I want you to take note of because that's a very important thing to see because that is a massive increase and and people getting this infection, that is an increase of about 460% per year. And keep in mind that 2025 still has two months to go or 2 1/2 months to go as we record this. Now, if we take into account recent changes that have happened with vaccines and we are in the first year of Trump's presidency, meaning that, you know, RFK is going to be wreaking havoc on on health in this country, you know, as the years go by. So a 460% increase year to year is likely to even go up if you follow me. And as a lot of you know, Texas is Ground Zero, right? The major outbreak in West TX, I think it was Gaines County area these that drove the state totals above 700 cases. That outbreak resulted in hospitalizations in the dozens and at least two or more confirmed deaths. Local public health officials report that the outbreak is largely centered in these close knit communities with historically low vaccine coverage. None of this information I'm giving you should surprise you or sound in any way because you know, we're hearing all these tidbits and everything, but put all together, you know, the trend is definitely communities that have low vaccine coverage and the reasons why they have low vaccine coverage can vary, but these are are known reasons that I'm sure that you guys know as well. In South Carolina, the situation is more contained, but it's still worrisome. So as of October 1st, the state health department confirmed that there were 8 cases in the Upstate region with most infections occurring within the last month. Earlier reports suggest higher student exposure in school quarantines. I think there was more than 130 unvaccinated students that were isolated in connection with these separate outbreaks. Utah, their public health data is more conservative. Only a handful of confirmed cases so far. But the presence of the measles virus, it's the fragments of it are detected in wastewater, which suggests that there is a silent transmission that is not captured by the case counts. Local authorities are currently characterizing it as it's a risk to general public. It is low, but there is a risk. They don't discount upticks if vaccination gaps widen. And then as another example, we'll click over to Minnesota. They have less prominent coverage, but state health department's data confirms that there's an uptick into the high teens. And this state information might seem what it doesn't seem like a lot, right? When I, when I put it to you, like these numbers are low, it's a few states or whatever. But this is really serious, right? Because measles infections are taking root in other states that it's not localized to these small communities or, or one state in the United States. It's moving. People are getting infections in other states now and the numbers are increasing. So measles is officially no longer confined to these fringe pockets, and it's going into larger populations. This is the beginning of something very, very worrisome. I'm pretty concerned about it to the point where I'm going to talk to my primary care physician about getting booster shots for the MMR, if I can even get my hands on that. So the vaccine coverage in general is slipping. You know, herd immunity against measles needs 95% coverage. This will take two doses. In 2023 to 24, the national kindergarten MMR rate was around 92.7%. This is already below the threshold in dozens of communities now. In 20/25/92 to 95% of patients were either unvaccinated or their status was unknown.

S: Patients with measles, Just to clarify the end, 92% of people who who have been confirmed measles cases were either not vaccinated or their vaccine status was unknown.

J: Right, correct.

US#04: Man.

J: A lot of outbreaks begin when a traveler imports measles into a low vaccination community and the local transmission fans out from there. So in 2025, only about 12% of cases were directly imported, meaning most spread happened domestically. Reports are that public health systems are stretched. You know, disease tracking, contact tracing, quarantine, enforcement, All of the infrastructure has degraded over the years due to underfunding. And now we have a dramatic downturn in funding this year, which sets the stage for a serious increase in infections. So what does this all mean and what should we do? So if what we're seeing right now, if it keeps up, and I see no reason why it shouldn't, largely because of what what what's happening with the government, measles could easily become a, a another huge problem in the United States. So here are some steps. They might be hard to achieve, but here, here are some steps. So we have to boost vaccination aggressively, especially in vulnerable communities. This one I give a big red X. That's not going to happen, but it should. We need to strengthen surveillance, which means including new tools like waste, border monitoring, things like that. That's not going to happen. That gets a red X because there's no money. Rapid outbreak containment. This means isolate cases, trace contacts, use post exposure. What is this? What is this guy's prophylaxis? Prophylaxis.

C: Prophylaxis.

S: Prophylaxis is prevention.

C: Prevention.

J: The problem here is that this is that costs a lot of money, that takes a lot of people to do it, and these are typically state and government employees. And that's another red X that is not going to happen. And public communication, basically we need public communication as the last measure here that is going to say that the truth is, is really important and we all need to listen to it. And it has to be more powerful out there than the lies that are being told. We need credible messengers inside skeptical groups, inside science communication inside, you know, large media. None of this is going to happen. It's already happening in in the world of of science and skepticism. Maybe not as much as we could be doing, but we're, you know, we are covering this. It is being talked about and there is a lot of awareness around this, but that doesn't track to the rest of the country obviously. And you know, however many skeptics there are that are vocal in the United States is not going to change the needle. Needle is still going to go in the bad direction. So to protect yourself and your children, just please make sure that all your vaccines are up to date. Make sure everybody that you care about gets boosters if they're older and you make sure that young kids get them right up until they're not able to get them anymore, which might happen at from what we're seeing. Steve, what is your take on everything that I said and from your knowledge, like where are we?

S: You know, measles is one of the big vaccine success stories. As you say, we eliminated measles in the US and a lot of Western countries. All cases were basically imported. We hadn't eradicated it from the world, but you know, we had made great strides and it always comes back when there are basically attacks on vaccines. You know what I mean? It's the, the return of measles is 100% entirely due to the anti vaccine movement. Absolutely. There's no question about that. As we say, the numbers are very, very clear. The the outbreaks occur in under or unvaccinated communities. It spreads mainly through people who are not vaccinated. And now we've we've dipped below sort of a critical threshold for herd immunity. And that's why we're seeing, you know, these outbreaks. And now it's going to get worse because RFK and and Trump are further confusing people and spreading misinformation and fear mongering about vaccines. It's going to cause a further dip. And this is just the Canary in the coal mine, right? This is this, we're going to see more return of vaccine preventable diseases. And again, not it's not a surprise. We've predicted this for 30 years. This is what we say whenever this happens, whenever you fear monger about vaccines and it reduces the rate of compliance, then we see outbreaks. This is absolutely predictable.

J: What would it look like though? I'm curious to know, like Fast forward three years, you know, where could we be? How bad could it get?

S: I mean, it's hard to say. You know, a lot of people have already been vaccinated, you know what I mean? So it's not like we're not starting with a naive population. But it's mainly for new kids coming up, right? School, You know, there could be a lot of if children are not getting vaccinated and if more states follow Florida, for example, say we're going to eliminate the vaccine requirements for public schools, which would be a disaster. But that's what they're that's what they're pushing for. This could get 10 times worse than it is now or 100 times worse than it is now. There's measles is extremely contagious. It's a very contagious virus.

J: What do you think about people in their late 50s and older getting booster shots?

S: Yeah, if you have any doubt of you can get your titers checked, you know, and then if your titers are low, you can talk to your primary care doctor about getting a booster.

J: What should the what should we go in? We go in and say, hey, can you test to see if I need a booster for MMR?

S: Yeah. Or just that they'll, they'll decide if you need one. Just talk to me. Hey, what do you think about me needing a booster for MMR? You know, should, what should I just do it? Should I get my titers checked? What do you recommend? And then they'll they'll individualize the recommendations to you.

J: Well, see What do tigers have to do with this?

S: A tighter, You know what a tighter is, Jay, do you know with the specific? Technical.

J: No, I'm waiting for you to tell me. I'm asking you.

S: A tighter is how much you can dilute something and still detect that it's there, right? So it's just a.

E: Homeopathy ish.

S: No, no.

C: Nothing to do with. Homeopathy. It's just a. With homeopathy, they keep diluting until it's not you.

E: Start with something and so.

S: Or you start with when you talk about how much of A tighter something has. The bigger the number, the the more of it you have, because that's like, you can dilute it, you can dilute it more and still be able to detect it. That's what that number means. It's like, how much did you dilute it before you stopped detecting it right? Does that make sense? So it's a, it's a dilution.

J: What you're the number is that is how much it was diluted and that gives you an understanding of how much you have left in your body. Yeah, right.

S: Exactly.

J: Yeah.

S: All right, guys, what? Didn't plan on having three sort of political items on this show, just sort of worked out that way.

Is Therapy Speech (39:45)

S: But I'm going to talk to you about is therapy like in the context of like counseling therapy, right? Is that speech in the context of free speech?

US#09: Oh, God, yeah.

S: Karen knows exactly where this is going. And this this question is before the Supreme Court. And it could have profound implications for the regulation of not only therapy, but of medicine in general. And you know, standard of care, quality control in medicine. And I think this also gets back to the whole issue of expertise and you know, whether we're living in a truth versus post truth kind of world, right? So here's the issue that the specific issue again, which is not as important as the broader implications here, but the specific issue has to do with conversion therapy. You guys know what conversion therapy is?

C: It is debunked and unethical.

S: Yeah. So conversion therapy is the idea. It's also called sexual orientation change efforts. That's the technical term in the literature. SOCE also might be referred to as reparative therapy, which is somewhat, you know, assuming a conclusion there. But conversion therapy basically is trying to treat, treat people, clients who for their sexual orientation or their gender identity to convert them to the correct one. Right. So there's a lot of air quotes in there.

Voice-over: Yeah.

S: The idea is that, like, say, people who are homosexual, that homosexuality is some somehow it's either unnatural or it's a mental illness or it's just not preferred, right. And you're going to convert them to be heterosexual because that's what God's God wants you to be or whatever, whatever the context is. Usually this is overwhelmingly done in a religious context. But yeah, for sure, you know, even if, even if not that, that's the idea. And this has been, this has been going on for a long time. It has been studied for decades. So let's just start with the premise here. You know, the premise is that conversion therapy A does not work and B is harmful. Again, there's a great South Park episode about this, you know, where there's like the conversion therapy camp where the, the kids are just committing suicide left and right. Obviously that's, that is exaggeration, but the but it is true that the consensus is, again, first of all, it doesn't work because it's, you know, your sexual orientation and your gender identity is not a choice. It is not a lifestyle thing. It's not something that is inflicted upon you by culture, it's something innate about your neurological status, right? It's about your brain development. You are the way you are. Obviously this is much better established scientifically for sexual orientation than for gender identity, but gender identity seems to be heading in the same direction as well.

C: Yeah. So not only is it does it not work as you were saying, it's actively harmful.

S: It's actively harmful, yeah.

C: It causes psychological disturbance.

S: It increases the risk of of depression of anxiety and suicidal ideation and societal attempts. Not a good thing. So for this reason, pretty much every medical, psychological, psychiatric healthcare organization and when I wrote about this on science based medicine, I have a list of 53 of them have condemned to the practice. Not only do they not recommend it, they actively condemn it like this is harmful, bad. Do not do this.

C: Oh yeah, you could lose your license as a psychologist if you engage in no harm. Yeah, yeah. It's not healthy.

S: So half of the states in the United States have banned it outright, Have banned conversion therapy as practice? Jeez, only half. Yes, this this is you know this is a complicated issue.

C: Yeah. Can you guess which states have banned and which ones happen?

E: Probably come close.

S: It is banned in Connecticut, I know that.

C: And California.

S: But here so So in Colorado, a therapist has sued the state. Colorado was one of the states where it's banned, saying that the the ban on conversion therapy is infringing on their free speech rights, not.

E: If there's harm involved.

C: Well, I guess they have free speech to harm their patients. Well, here's an here's an interesting question and I know I'm getting into the weeds a little. When you say therapist, that could be a. Million.

S: They're a licensed counselor.

C: Counselor OK, so they have their own governing body. Like I obviously operate from licensed psychologists, you know, the APA and I know, I know our stance on it is across the board. But I guess licensed counselors, I'm not sure who their governing body is.

S: Most articles about it don't say specifically what her yeah, just that she's a licensed therapist. But that therapist could. There's several ways you can get to that.

C: Yeah, you can be like an LPCC, like a licensed professional counselor. Put that aside.

S: There's multiple different licenses under which you could do talk therapy. Yeah, and she's one of them. So she says this just infringes upon my free speech. Multiple cases have gone before circuit courts before, and they've all decided that, no, the state has the right to regulate what happens in therapy, right As this is, yes, the state health departments can determine standard of care for the profession for which they give you a license. That's fine. There's no disagreement among the circuit courts, which means, which makes it unusual for the Supreme Court to take up the case because they usually only take up cases when there's disagreement among the circuit courts. They're trying to resolve that disagreement. But they did take up a case, the Colorado case, and they they have not made a decision, but they did give here testimony. And of course, they often tip their hand by how, by the questions they ask. And it does look like the conservative justices on the court are leaning in the direction of that. This is, you know, of erroring on the side of free speech.

E: Wow, that's going. To be a problem.

S: It's a huge problem. So there's many layers here. And interestingly, just to start, I'm actually not a fan of states of legislatures getting involved in specific standard of care decisions.

C: Me neither, because The thing is, there's the.

S: Expertise.

C: And there should be an overarching governing body over her license. That's what that's why I was digging into this. Like, I was specifically looking at, you know, the governing body that that covers me, the American Psychological Association, but also the California Board of Psychology. Both of them combined say that I could lose my license if I engaged Yeah in conversion therapy because I would be violating both California law and professional ethics. Yeah. And you're right. That should be enough.

S: That should be enough.

C: Just losing your license, so then you shouldn't be able to practice.

S: Anything I've always advocated for this should be handled at the certification level. The state that gives that grants you your license. They regulate the standard of care. They don't determine the standard of care, right? They don't say this is the standard of care. The profession determines what the standard of care is. But if you practice below that standard of care, if you violate it sufficiently, that could be grounds for the health department to act against your license. And that's not just all like they take it away. They don't take it away. They could suspend it. They could censure you. They could require you to get CME or whatever to go to get education. There are remedies in place, right? There's some remedy, up to and including they're taking your license away.

C: But here's a reason that might not be enough, Steve. So I just found a report from the Trevor Project from 2023. They looked at over 1300 conversion therapy providers in the US and they found that 54% of them were operating in an unlicensed religious or ministerial capacity. So only 46% of them even had a professional license.

S: Right. But that that is you're correct and that's a that's a good reason to just ban it. If it is happening outside of the confines of of professional licensure, then obviously regulating licenses is not sufficient, but it's which is that should be fixed right that. Should.

C: Yeah, that should be fixed.

S: That's practicing medicine without a license, right? That's another problem that creates a situation where then you have to get legislatures involved. And The thing is, usually when legislators do get involved, or many times, it's not a good thing, right? It's it's politicizing a topic that should be entirely evidence based and determined by experts. And the legislatures can get involved in both directions. So they could ban a practice. They could also exempt a practice from the standard of care, which is kind of a worse problem. So in Connecticut, for example, the Connecticut legislature exempted the treatment of chronic Lyme disease from licensure issues. So which means a practitioner is free to do, you know, whatever they want to treat chronic Lyme disease and, and, and the state cannot act against their license for doing that. It's sort of carved out, this protection.

C: Terrible on the flip.

S: Terrible law. The legislature should not be determining what the standard of care is. Now, again, I do agree that there are some exceptions. 1 is if the existing mechanisms are insufficient, but also if something is really egregious like we've known.

C: Conversion therapy.

S: Yeah, like, like conversion that if it's egregious enough and there's pressures to do it, then it might be just logistically easier. In other words, instead of having to go to court on each individual case to, you know, to have a hearing about a practitioner's license and do and basically establish the standard of care each and every time. You could say, all right, this is so far beyond the pale. We're just going to categorically say that this is below the standard of care and we're just going to ban it statewide. So it is reasonable in these kinds of cases. I just wish it weren't necessary. And I just, I'm just also logging my discomfort with legislators being involved in the standard of there because they really, other than enforcing it, they should not be determining what it is. But again, having said all that, that's not the issue at stake here. The issue at stake is whether or not the states even have the right to regulate what a therapist says in the context of a therapy session, a licensed therapist. And you know, the fact that there are justices expressing skepticism about that is chilling. It's frightening because think about that. They're saying that, oh, this is a free speech issue. It's like, no, it's, it's absolutely not a free speech issue. First of all, that therapist can say whatever they want in the public forum about conversion therapy. They can advocate for the law to be changed. They could, if they have a case to make, they could make it in pretty much any venue they want. The only thing that this law is is regulating is what they're doing in a in a professional client relationship.

E: Right, different.

S: Which is.

C: Absolutely has to be.

S: Under regulation. That's the whole point of regulation.

C: And I think there's another layer here, which is that most of the laws that are in existence right now are actually specifically intended to protect minors. And I think that when we're talking about conversion therapy for minors, it has special consideration and you could be looking at it from a different angle, which is an abuse angle.

S: Yeah, and which is all the more reason why it should be banned so often times it's done on minors.

C: Often times. It's done with. Most of the problems are with minors. Yeah, because the parents.

S: Are often done in the context of extreme pressure from parents, from religious groups, from society. So that was that's the reason people who have advocated for these laws banning conversion therapy, that's one of their main arguments. This is a vulnerable population.

C: And that's the thing that's so frustrating. We've already legislated this, we've already adjudicated this. We have case law already.

S: Yeah, exactly. I agree. So I think there's a couple of reasons for it here. I think why the conservative justices were sort of leaning in this direction. It seems, you know, by their questioning, 1 is they don't really think that therapy is medicine, right? And that's just a bias against mental health. Yeah, complete bias against mental health.

C: They think it's no different than a pastoral care administration.

S: So they it's not like, well, you're not prescribing a drug. It's like, well, it's still a medical intervention meant to treat a defined problem. And these people are licensed professionals. They're supposed to be bet practicing evidence based interventions and there's all the ethics involved about first do no harm, etcetera. It's absolutely, absolutely, in this context a medical intervention. And so that is just an anti mental health bias in my opinion, which I completely think is wrong. And then the other thing is that it's because they agree with it, right? They, they yeah, one of the justices, I think Sotomayor asked a very, very telling question, which I think cuts right to the heart of the whole issue. And I hope this resonated with the other justices. She asked, if a dietitian decides to help anorexics starve themselves, can the government stop them? Or is that free speech? Right? If if that was good, if a therapist or a dietitian basically helps a someone who has anorexia starve themselves to death, is that free speech? Or can the state say that's malpractice that is substandard care? Or how about this one? This is a little bit of a hypothetical. What if there were an intervention that could abort A fetus? Would it be free speech for a doctor in a state where abortion is banned to tell a patient, by the way, if you take this dose of this combination of medications, which you can get over the counter, that would abort your fetus? I'm just giving you information.

C: That's an even better example because that one makes their heckles go up.

S: Right. So that Yeah, but they feel the same way about that.

J: Of course not. Of course not, right? That's whatever they want.

S: That's my point. It's also been pointed out that the same court reaffirmed Tennessee's right to ban gender affirming care for minors in Tennessee. Right. So oh, so the state can ban gender affirming care, but they can't ban conversion therapy? It's kind of hard not to see that as blatantly hypocritical. Again, you have to say, well, that one's a medical intervention. The other one is therapy. It's like, but I've already dealt with that. I disagree that one has a standard of care and the other one is do whatever you want. It's only talk therapy. And the only other difference is that they're in sort of opposite directions ideologically. So I don't know, it's hard. I think that they're going to, they might vote a certain way because of how they feel about this issue, without fully appreciating how devastating this would be to the standard of care in American healthcare. Because now every quack. Every.

US#09: Con.

S: Artist is going to is going to hide behind freedom of speech for any nonsense that they want to do. This would be such a dangerous precedent. It'd be an absolutely devastating to science based medicine. Absolutely devastating, right? Well, this is the first line of defense, right? This is like there is a standard of care. That standard of care is basically regulated at the state level. And if, if it's all free speech, now it you know, then there is no standard of care. And this is just one of the many assaults on the standard of care.

E: Yeah, other aspects of society, other professions. It's again could say this is part of the broader. This could. Become a runaway thing.

S: It's part of the broader assault on expertise in general, on professionalism, right? It's like everything is opinion. Everything is just freedom and everything. There is no right or wrong. There's no standard, there's no whatever.

E: Relativism. It is worse.

C: It's so scary.

S: Very. Dangerous. Keep an eye on this. This could be potentially devastating.

C: Yeah.

Solar Activity Increasing (56:40)

S: All right, Bob, we're going to switch gears here. Tell us about solar activity. What is going on with the Sun, huh?

B: Don't be too worried, Steve. All right, All right. So we have recent NASA analysis asked a seemingly simple question. Is the sun sliding into a decades long slump or has it been kind of surreptitiously revving back up since 2008? This new research comes from plasma physicist Jamie Jaczynski and space physicist Marco Valley, both from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. So the opening sentence needs some unpacking. So let's put this latest research into a little bit more of context. We all love the sun, right, guys? It seems constant, right? It's predictable and predictable, right?

J: It's like the King of planets, Bob.

B: Right. It's always there doing its job, even though it's been crazy hot lately. And that's all on us. That's our fault. She's got nothing to do with it. But but even a superficial scientific inquiry shows, you know, just how changeable and irascible it it really is. And this is reflected in one pattern that almost everyone, I think has has heard of many people, certainly almost everyone listening to this podcast. What's that? What what pattern reflects this kind of like weird changeability to a certain extent?

S: The solar cycle.

B: It's solar cycles, right? It's yeah, it's solar cycles, yeah. It's an 11 year cycle, right Evan, where the sun cycles from a minimum sunspot activity to a maximum and then back down to a minimum again. That's a that's a 11 year cycle. Did you know that at the end of the maximum part of that cycle, there's also a magnetic pole reversal. And it's not, this is, it's not something that just like flips one day, like up we're flipped. Now this could take, it could take a couple of years or more for this, for this reversal to happen. And it of course, there's no, you know, no negative consequences. It's not like apocalyptic. It happens every eleven years. So this cycle, as I said, is mainly tracked by counting sunspots. It's essentially, but we also typically see an increased amount of solar flares, right? A coronal mass ejections as well as we head to that solar maximum in the middle of the 11 year cycle. So we, we see those things as well. So we're currently in solar cycle 25. And since they take about 11 years, that tells you how long we've been tracking these solar cycles specifically long time. And and before that people were tracking sunspots, I think since the the 1600s. So it's been quite a while since we've been, you know, taking a critical eye and looking at our sun. This, this cycle, as I've described it, though, in many ways it's more of a guideline than a rule for should I wait for any private comment? No, for for example, for for example, for a whopping 70 years between 1645 and 1715, there were almost no sunspots at all on on the Sun. You could people, people born in 1645, if they tried and tried, they probably would have never seen any sunspots at all their entire lives. This is called the Maunder Minimum. You may have heard of that, that term and a similar lull occurred between 1790 and 1830. Definitely not as not as powerful as the Maunder Minimum, but this was the Dalton minimum as well. So that happens. So now we've been thinking for years now that perhaps Sun was entering another similar quiescent phase, something, you know, some kind of grand minimum that could take. Who knows? It could take many, many decades potentially. What does quiescent mean? Like the Maunder Minimum where there was no sunspots, it was kind of. You could describe that as a quiescent phase if you want. So, so this, this pattern started around late 1980s, early 1990s where this this phase of the sun where it just seemed like, yeah, it's just not as active as it typically is. The the solar wind emitted by the sun started getting noticeably weaker. And if you counted those right, if you counted those peak number of sunspots during the solar maximum, like so halfway through the solar cycle, you know, you do a count how many sunspots do we got? So that peak number started decreasing starting in there, say 1990 approximately the the most recently completed cycle, solar cycle 24, which ended in 2019 was also notably very weak. And so that weakening trend seemed to be continuing. And so this is where this is where the researchers come in because they wanted to answer this question. You know, are we entering potentially another type of grand minimum phase of the sun and, and what is, and what does that bring? Because it's important to know that kind of stuff because the the evidence we have for those two other Mont those two other minimums we have it was it coincided with a a cooler climate. So it could potentially have cooled the earth a little bit, although that evidence could be a coincidence, but that's there were things happen when the sun is less active. There are there are ramifications in in various arenas. So this is where the researchers come in. They took a detailed look at the cycle 24 starting in 2008 through 2019 and they found that even though the solar wind was weak, it was clearly it's strength, though the strength of the solar wind had stopped declining, which was a major, major inflection point. So no matter how they looked at the solar wind, they looked at the speed they took, they looked at density, temperature, thermal pressure, mass, magnetic field, magnitude, all of these, all of these attributes showed an increase. And also the sunspot numbers were also consistent with these with these solar wind changes. So the, the information was in the data, it was subtle, but it was definitely happening that the increases were happening and the decreases had stopped. So, so these scientists looked at at this evidence and they interpreted as in their conclusion was basically the sun is not slipping into something like a Maunder minimum. This is something that was just a 20, you know, a 20 year period. And it doesn't seem to be going into this minimum phase. Plasma physicist Jamie Jaczynski said all signs were pointing to the sun going into a prolonged phase of low activity. So it was a surprise, surprised to see that trend reversed. The sun is slowly waking up. So you if you read websites on this, people, you know, always latching onto that phrase that the sun is slowly waking up. Now cycle 25, which we're in right now, it's no monster with this is not a monster that like cycle, solar cycle where it's like going crazy, but it's definitely a lot punchier than cycle 24 was. And their interpretation of what's happening actually makes sense when you consider another cycle that kind of super precedes this solar cycle and it's called the the hail cycle. So now the hail cycle consists of 211 year solar cycles back-to-back. So it's not 11, it's 11 and 11. You know, those two one after the other is this hail cycle. So this so this means though, that at the beginning and the end of the hail cycle, what happens? The sun's polarity is the same because remember the magnetic poles flip every eleven years. So it takes 22 years for it to get back, right? So from, at the end of one solar cycle, it's the, the, the polarity flips, but then at the end of the next cycle, it's flipped back to where it was 22 years previously. You understand that this is actually in line with a lot of solar scientists. They're beginning to think that this cycle, this solar cycle is more fundamental than just 11 years, 11 years, 11 years. It's this, it's this hail cycle that kind of is a, is a better representation, a better marker of what's going on under the surface of the sun than just the simple, you know, 11 year cycles. So it looks like the sun was not in a deep sleep. It was more, maybe it was more of a power nap, you know, a 20 year power nap, but it wasn't anything like a 50 or 70 or 80 year minimum equivalent to the mod that Maunder minimum. That means, though, what that means that we could have a more lively sun in the near future. And that's a double edged sword because on one hand, you've got the sun's heliosphere, you know, it's it's magnetic influence in the solar system. It gets a beefier when the sun is more active. And because of the way that that the heliosphere is oriented that it could actually protect us from cosmic rays even more than than it's doing right now. Yeah, that's nice. But on the other, yes, the other side of that coin is that there's greater risk from space weather, you know, so satellites, GPS, power grids, they're all or at higher risk when the sun is much more lively than when it's not. So this is kind of a double edged sword. So in, in the future, these scientists think that we that if we ever want to truly model the sun and accurately predict cycles and minimums, we need to track closely far more aspects of its behavior than we're doing now. I mean, I mean, these cycles rely a lot on just counting these sunspots and we need to do a lot more than that. And, and you've got to treat them more seriously, more on the level of how we, how we focus on sunspots. They do, they do look at these other things, but it's just we need to encompass more variables and track that. And it just made me think of just how amazingly incredible stars are. Imagine you got gravity and you've got a huge amount of hydrogen. You put them together, give it some time. This amazingly complex engine arises from that over millions and billions of years. And it's still, you know, the complexities still baffle our brightest minds. One thing that this study points to is the fact that the better that we understand our sun's rhythms, especially it's magnetic rhythms of course, the more we can turn guesswork into real forecasts.

S: So, Bob, here's a question. I don't know if they went into this, if the sun wakes up and gets more active, doesn't that cause a little bit of increased warming of our planet? Could this then exacerbate global warming?

B: The typical flux of irradiance from the sun during during these cycles, these solar cycles is like a, it's like 1 in 1000, it's point 1.1%. So that, so the kind of flux you get there is is not is not dramatic, is not dramatic enough to really, I mean, you know, you Steve, you know very well that that many people tried to blame.

S: Well, solar force, there's no solar forcing going.

B: On yeah, there's no force.

S: Cycles. And as you say in the cycles could be reinforcing or counteracting a little bit of the global warming. I didn't know if that was.

B: It's yeah, it's like, it's, yeah, I think it's, it's fairly trivial. And it's nothing that, yeah, it's nothing we can really do about it. But I I think it's it's pretty trivial.

S: Yeah, I I hear that, but I don't know intuitively that .1% is not significant in terms of Earth weather.

E: Because didn't you say that in the opposite direction, if there was a prolonged lack of activity that has a?

B: There could be cool. Yeah, it.

E: Could be Possibly could go cooler. Yeah, absolutely.

B: Yeah. That's, that's what the the data we have from the, the two big minimums in our past it, it seemed to coincide with, with a cooler, cooler climate. But they, they could be just just coincidence. But yeah. So Steve, yeah, I just don't know how dramatic that would be. Yeah. For, for climate change. I, I, I expect it's not, it's not dramatic. It's just like, you know, at what level? How how you know, how negligible is it? I don't know exactly.

S: All right. Thanks, Bob.

Possible Wormhole (1:07:46)

S: Evan, tell us about this wormhole, and specifically, are we building a deep space station next to it?

E: No, Steve, that that is the question. I mean, you had to have a deep space station next to and the wormhole, assuming there is one. And scientists claim they might have detected A wormhole and that these wormholes were created by boar worms.

S: Not the boar worms. Not the boar, thank.

E: You right on cue. Yeah, science fiction right there. But no, there is this new paper that suggests A gravitational wave event that was first detected back in 2019. Bob, this is GW19-O52.

B: 121 OK, gotcha.

E: And it might. Be the echo of a black hole merger in another universe that opened a transient wormhole into ours. How do they know that? Do they know that? No. What's this all about? Well, I read about this first at an article over at futurism.com. They are. This is a preprint article.

S: That's an important caveat, yes.

E: Very important preprint. This has not been peer reviewed or anything close to it yet, but here's the here's the title is GW19-O521-A gravitational wave echo of a wormhole remnant or from another universe question mark. So the authors of the paper are reinterpreting the gravitational wave event that was detected in 2019, which has been attributed to two black holes merging. But instead they're suggesting it's possibly an echo of a merger that took place in a different universe, but it was transmitted through a wormhole. We call it a wormhole throat that momentarily connected with our universe and sort of created, I don't know, this like cosmic burp in a sense. I just think the only. Way to? Sort of maybe describe it. And so here's what they're suggesting. Their model, the merger happens in the other universe and produces a ring down gravitational wave and that wave traverses the wormhole throat and emerges here as the short isolated pulse. You know, and not even that it's like even you know, that's that's exaggerating it, I'm sure. But a wave emerges and traverses what they call the wormhole throat, you know, which I think we can all sort of a vision. We've all watched Star Trek except for Cara. And so we know what that what that would look like visually. And there you get this short isolated pulse at the end. They say they use the Bayesian statistical analysis. And what they found is that, yeah, the standard black hole merger interpretation is is favored, but it's not so strongly favored that you can rule out the wormhole echo hypothesis. And sure enough, media jumped all over this with splashy headlines like Signal from another Universe and wormhole detection, of course.

S: That's always the weakest form of argument. Well, you can't strictly rule it out.

E: Therefore.

S: Okay, so you got that going for you.

E: Therefore imagination run wild go yay click bait click bait. That's basically what it comes down to. Yep, not peer reviewed yet, as we say it's the idea itself is very speculative and and look, futurism even acknowledged that certainly they they didn't gloss over that they, they, they specifically said that prevailing scientific consensus prefers the standard binary black hole merger model, but again, not significant enough to rule out the alternate echo for wormhole model. All right, well, what can we make of it? Like how, how should we weigh this? How much skepticism is do you think is appropriate here?

C: All of it.

B: A lot, yeah. Even even a little more than that. Maybe.

S: I mean, I kind of file this away like saying it's aliens. It's like, well we can't prove it's not aliens, but that's not a really good reason to say that, especially when there's a far more mundane and known 'cause that that itself can't be real until you rule out that this is 2 black holes merging or some other similar type type of event. My my reaction.

B: Yeah, my reaction was 3 words. Holy Occam's razor. Yeah, this this hypothesis requires other universes. Hello. Hello. No independent evidence that they even exist.

J: Wait, Bob, haven't you been watching the Marvel movies? There's a multiverse out there.

E: It says so in the title.

B: Yes, and this is the, this is the, this is the universe where we don't believe any of that crap. So. Yeah, right. So.

E: Did they decide, OK, well, here's here's how a wormhole throat would work, right? I mean, you have to introduce so many new things.

B: And, and exactly, and that's the other part of the holy Occam's razor, because you would need to hold open that throat. You would need enough exotic negative energy, which we've never seen in any, in any astrophysical amounts that could account for that in anywhere in space. So those, those two things, you know, are like, come on, this is, it's ridiculous. You don't need to this, this is, you know, black hole collisions are, are messy things. You know, the, the, and these were very heavy black holes. You know, the, the way they spin, they could have eccentric orbits that that's, that's all a recipe for these weird, short, potentially bursty, you know, signals you don't need, you don't need a wormhole. This is well within normal black hole physics and and just invoking other universes is ridiculous. Ridiculous.

S: I wouldn't object to that per SE, like coming up with a more exotic explanation for the signal. But just give me a testable hypothesis, right? Or some way beyond anomaly hunting. Again, don't just give me some well this is weird. Give me something concrete like this is argue strongly against a black hole merger or is an indication that we would predict of some other type of phenomenon rather than just totally shooting from the hip.

B: I mean, I mean, what does this, this other universe even add to their, to their hypothesis? It's, it's all, it's just, it's just click bait. And that's why. And we're talking about it because of that, we're talking about it. And many more people have read about. This about we're skeptics.

S: So we. Get to talk about click bait, but because we're skeptical, it's OK.

B: Yes, I agree with that. I agree with that.

E: Steve, you use the word exotic, right? And yeah, so exotic compact objects, EC, OS, Bob.

B: You've ever heard of those exotic?

E: Speculative signatures, sometimes invoked in quantum gravity. Also known as exotic compact object proposals. They include things. I'll give you 3 examples. Bosun stars, Grava stars, hadn't heard of that one before. And something called fuzzballs. There's a thing called fuzzballs. In part of them. In quantum physics, holy crow. Great names. Great names. I'll wrap it up with this because I did throw this out to our resident, you know, physicist Brian, Brian Wecht of. Course.

B: Oh yeah, just yeah.

E: Just say, hey, Brian, what you know what? Give me give me your quick low down on this like how skeptical should I be of this and I'll read to you what he wrote to me. He said hello Evan. This paper strikes me as what if normal thing was weird thing one. Of. Those kinds of projects like Avi Loeb likes to work. With exactly. These are a dime a dozen in theoretical physics. He says he doesn't know anything about the researchers or the specific work, but he doesn't see anything that causes this paper to rise above the usual noise. That is all it is. He's not saying it's wrong, it's just that he doesn't think it's really worth the the the ones and zeros that publish this.

S: Yeah. And again, like I, I don't have a problem with the background noise of science that that happens. My problem is when the media picks up on the background noise and amplifies it as if it's something that deserves special attention when it when it doesn't.

B: Yeah, how many people now are going to say, hey, I mean, didn't scientists find evidence of of other universes with that, with that black hole merger thing? I mean, come.

S: On and worse than that, Bob, then they'll say those scientists, they don't know anything. 10 years ago they were saying they discovered another universe or whatever. They'll use it as an example of scientists not know what they're talking about or changing what they're saying all the time. Or oh great. Throwing shit against the wall. It's like, no, that was.

E: Your deconstruction, right?

S: Yeah.

B: Yeah, I mean, how cool if they imagine if they did find some extra little bit of evidence that this paper sorely needed something that you could that we could follow through and and investigate with other black hole mergers in the future. And how cool would that have been if this was, if there was some weird hint that seemed both Damn man, That's that's that's worthy of, of more investigation. It would have been so cool. But no, there's like nothing there. They leave it hanging there. So it's like, oh, look at this, like pretty shiny.

E: Nothing to it, but hey, it shines.

S: All right. Thanks, Evan. Yep.

Who's That Noisy? + Announcements (1:16:45)

S: All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time? All right guys, last week I played this noisy.

E: I don't know what it is, but I like.

J: It what's happening in this? What is this guys?

S: Come on, I. Think it's another animal. OK, I guess singing along with whatever.

J: Is that the best you got?

S: What do you what do you want to help me tell you what kind of animal?

J: Is it also?

S: Playing the game, it also has that squeaky herpetology kind of vibe going on.

US#04: It's Cartman on ketamine.

J: OK, Well, I have listeners that have guests and we'll start with a listener named Chuck, and he says, hi, Jay. My guest for this week's Noisy is that somebody took audio of a baby making baby noises, then matched the pitches to musical harmony, then played along chords on the piano that matched the noises.

US#04: Yeah.

J: OK, that is not correct, but not fully incorrect. I will move on. A listener named Michael and here we go. Kalanikos. Kalanikos 20 samos OK, so Michael says hi Jay, it's a bird, specifically a bird singing along to the song that the human is playing on the piano. He's seeing a pattern here. He also says, looking forward to seeing you in Sydney. Don't know if I can come to all three days, but he wants to go. He wants to go to the private show and extravaganza. He wants to have popcorn with Steve. Lots of fun stuff. Another listener named Charlie Cluepfull said this week's Who's That Noisy? Sounds like someone using a rubber party balloon as a musical instrument, constricting the outflow of air to control the pitch. Damn the tune being played with piano accompaniment. That is not correct. I had a ton of people guessed correctly, so I have to default to the very first person who sent in the first correct guess. This listener is named Bradford West, and Bradford said IIIJ. Believe it or not, this is the second time I'm guessing that a particular noisy is a turtle doing the naughty. I was wrong the first time. Maybe it's just me, but this week's noisy totally sounds like a turtle. And then he gets into a few catch phrases here, which I can't say, but the turtle is doing something. He ends the sentence with ecstatic moaning and then supported by piano chords. OK so now mind you this was a video that was sent to me by a listener and since I grabbed the audio that that that video has been taken down.

E: What?

J: I think big turtle like just doesn't like what was going on there. I am almost 100% sure that what was happening in the video was the turtle was indeed having coitus and they recorded this turtle and then someone went in and put music on top of the noises. Yeah, I don't think the turtle was auto tuned.

S: But it was edited or. Or not.

J: No, I saw, you know, I saw a good 22nd video with the camera moving and stuff. And you know, and I've heard, you know, this noise before. I think a lot of listeners have. To summarize, I, I completely think that this is a turtle doing the ACT that I told you being recorded, then someone playing music afterwards to make it match. So great guests, everybody that guessed correctly this week. I read all of your emails. I could, you know, I can't respond to everybody and I can't put you all on here, but I know who you are. And I do keep a list. It's a secret. Who's that noisy list? But I do keep a list. So anyway, thank you all for this week. That was a lot of fun. And my God, that noisy. Like I wasn't even sure I was going to play it, but then I realized I've played something similar before. So no, no worries there. I have a new noisy this week. This is from a listener named Mark Penny. OK, if you think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, e-mail me at wtn@theskepticsguide.org.

S: Jay, are the people talking in the background incidental?

J: They are incidental, OK.

E: That's right out of silence. And Jay, that that that sounds like the dentist cleaning gun water squirt thing. Oh the like the water pic. Yeah, that high pitched. Oh, I hate that. That's what it sounds like to me.

J: So anyway, you know what to do. Now, let me get on to a couple of other things. Yeah, yeah. So first of all, I haven't mentioned this in a little while, but we do have a mailing list that goes out every week. And that mailing list contains everything that we've done the previous week. And as you know, we're adding more things as these weeks roll by. So if you'd like to get on that mailing list, go to theskepticsguide.org and you can join the mailing list on our home page. You'll find the link there.

E: Takes a long time to fix all those stamps to that mail.

J: Yeah, it sure does. Thank you, Evan. I appreciate it. At least one of you realizes how busy I am. And then I'd like to remind everyone that we have a Patreon. It's patreon.com/skeptics Guide. Not to sound dramatic, but in these times of unbelievable, how do you summarize it in one sentence? You know what's going on and we, we need to get science and critical thinking out to everybody. But it starts with us educating skeptics. And those skeptics can go around and start helping other people get the the truth, the real information, get an understanding of what's going on in the world. If you want to help us make this happen, you could become a patron of ours. patreon.com/skeptics Guide. It's a, you know, dark times, guys. It's dark and, and you know, I'm personally scared and frustrated and angry. But the bottom line is the only thing that we can do is, is get, you know, get the, the real information out there and educate as many people as we can and be a voice of reason in a world that is becoming very unreasonable. I'm hopeful and optimistic, but you keep saying that and I'm like, I'm glad you are.

S: Steve But that's because I'm thinking in, in terms of hundreds of years.

J: Yes.

E: Things will be better on a geologic time. Everyone's chance of. Survival.

S: It's all about your perspective that you choose.

J: To yeah, but in the short term work needs to be done. We are the kind of people that do the work and if you want to support our effort then please consider becoming a.

S: Patron, thank you.

Name That Logical Fallacy (1:23:32)

Topic: I'm engaged in a discussion on the internet about pornography. The argument is made that, quote, "If you think porn causes no harms then let's broadcast it in every public place." Apart from the straw argument that nobody has actually said that porn causes no harms, what is the fallacy here? Thanks, your friend, Arthwollipot

S: We have a quick name. That logical fallacy. This one comes from our Thwalla Pot. That's the guy. That's what he wrote and he writes, I'm engaged in a discussion on the Internet about pornography. The argument is made that quote, if you think porn causes no harms, then let's broadcast it in every public place. Apart from the straw man argument that nobody has actually said that porn causes no harms, what is the fallacy here? So what do you guys think?

C: So is he asking? So he's saying, OK, straw man porn causes no harm. Yes, in certain instances we know the porn does cause harm. So he's talking about the if it did, 'cause no harm.

S: If it causes no harm, why not broadcast it everywhere?

C: Is that like a slippery slope or a Nirvana kind of a thing?

S: Yeah, I think it's definitely a slip. It's partly a slippery slope. You could also say the argument, I think the closest is the argument ad absurdum, right? Let's take it to its extreme example. You know, then it's like saying, Oh yeah, if you think guns are safe, why don't we just arm every single person in the country? You know, it's like.

C: People say that.

S: I know, I know that those kind of arguments are silly because they are just taking it to a deliberately absurd again. And we've talked about the argument at absurdum. That can be a valid type of argument. If you're saying, if you're making a specific premise, you can test that premise by seeing how far you can push it, right? And if someone is making an absolute statement, then you could definitely challenge the absoluteness of that statement by saying, well, let's then take it to its logical conclusion and see if it holds up. But there's the invalid argument from absurd and which is like this. Like you take a reasonable argument, you turn it into an absurd extreme and then argue against that, or say, well because this absurd extreme isn't true, your more reasonable version is also not true, so.

C: If somebody was trying to argue that porn was under every circumstance, every iteration, always safe and always, you know, whatever, welcome, then they could make that and it wouldn't be.

S: I think, I think it's still invalid because saying that porn is safe is not the same thing as saying that it's appropriate for public broadcast, especially everywhere, regardless of location or situation or the people who are there or whatever. Safety is not the only issue. So there's a lot of unstated major premises in that as well, right. But yeah, they be be careful of those kinds of arguments, you know, because they're they're rarely valid for a number of reasons.

From TikTok: What if we place the Earth in a vacuum. (1:26:21)

https://www.tiktok.com/@_7club_/video/7540763380429098295

S: OK, we're also going to do talk about a video that we talked about on TikTok actually last week. But it's it's kind of fun. So I thought we would talk about it on the show as well. So then this video the the person who the creator is arguing, well, you're actually not arguing anything. He types into ChatGPT. What would happen if the Earth were suddenly in a vacuum, which is kind of a silly question, but that's the question he asked ChatGPT. And the answer he got was, well, the Because in a vacuum, the atmosphere would would go away, right? And then the, the oceans would boil and all life on Earth would be destroyed. And the guy's just sort of smugly crossing his arms and nodding as if that's correct, right?

E: Is this point that Earth is not in a vacuum?

S: Yeah, I think it's a flat earther, right? This is probably. Yeah, because this is what that's one of the things the flat earthers say. So a couple of things we could say about this on one level. First of all, don't use ChatGPT like an Oracle, right? You can't just ask it a question and take whatever it spits out as if it were the absolute.

E: Truth, right?

S: Right. We know that it hallucinates, we know that it makes mistakes, we know that it makes assumptions about context. So I just to see what would happen, I asked the same question to, you know, ChatGPT and it did give that answer. But then I asked a follow up question. I said, yeah, but isn't the Earth already in a vacuum? And it says, yes, of course it is. You know, good point. You know, I always just said that's a great point way.

US#03: To go, Steve. Do you know Boss?

S: So it's just generically talking about what happens to things in a vacuum, right? And then just right, not really putting it in the context of the Earth, which is in space, which is a vacuum. But then once you push it on context, then it gives you, you know, if you have an actual conversation with it and you haven't asked clarifying questions and contextual questions, then it starts to give you more reasonable information. Like, yes, there is no sort of demarcation between the atmosphere and space. You know that, you know, the, it talks about internal versus external forces. You know, the the, the atmosphere is being held in by gravity, Hello. And that's balanced by the pressure of the gas in the atmosphere. And that's why the atmosphere gets thinner as you go higher and higher in altitude.

US#03: And we do lose atmosphere we didn't lose. Some of that.

S: Right, because there's an, it's at equilibrium. It's at equilibrium with gravity and it's basically held in by the weight of the atmosphere above it, right? So you could actually get some real scientific information out of it if you know how to ask questions correctly and you have you ask clarifying questions, etcetera, etcetera. But so yeah, it's kind of a stupid question. It's a total flat earther thing, yeah, but it is disturbing the degree to which and how quickly people are falling into. It's like, well, ChatGPT says it, therefore it's true.

C: Yeah, it's really scary.

S: Yeah, it's just, it's.

E: Not good.

C: It's not, I mean it's like, and with that, that's with just over reality now talk about all of the biases because all ChatGPT is doing is scraping stuff that people already said and put online.

B: And also, Steve, another way to look at it is just purely from a escape velocity point of view that that applies as well. These, you know, the atmosphere does not have the escape velocity to get out away from the Earth like that. You know, regardless if there's, if there's a vacuum out there and, and we, we do in fact do lose some atmosphere all the time, but we've got so much that we would probably last a billion years losing it at that rate before it was problematic. So it's like.

E: And space is technically not a pure vacuum either. I. Mean right? There there is interstellar medium that we actually exist within. It's not really 100% vacuum, right? Which is why we can't get to 0.

B: No, I mean even even the the purest vacuum that would all would have you know, you'd have to get into quantum mechanics and virtual particles and that that kind of stuff, which is kind of out of scope here, but.

E: Yeah, I'm not going there. Stay away.

Science or Fiction (1:30:38)

Theme: Insects

Item #1: Flight evolved independently three times among insects and emerged first among insects, about 350 million years ago.[6]
Item #2: Termites are a type of cockroach, the one with the most complex social system.[7]
Item #3: The largest insect to ever live was Meganeuropsis permiana, a giant predatory dragonfly with a wingspan of 2.5 feet that likely hunted frogs and small mammals.[8]

Answer Item
Fiction Flight evolved independently three times among insects and emerged first among insects, about 350 million years ago.
Science Termites are a type of cockroach, the one with the most complex social system.
Science
The largest insect to ever live was Meganeuropsis permiana, a giant predatory dragonfly with a wingspan of 2.5 feet that likely hunted frogs and small mammals.
Host Result
Steve win
Rogue Guess
Jay
 The largest insect to ever live was Meganeuropsis permiana, a giant predatory dragonfly with a wingspan of 2.5 feet that likely hunted frogs and small mammals.
Bob
 Flight evolved independently three times among insects and emerged first among insects, about 350 million years ago.
Evan
 Flight evolved independently three times among insects and emerged first among insects, about 350 million years ago.
Cara
 Flight evolved independently three times among insects and emerged first among insects, about 350 million years ago.


S: All right guys, it is time for science or fiction.

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

S: Each week I come up with three Science News items or facts, 2 genuine and one fake, and then I chose my panel of skeptics. Tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. The theme is insects. A lot of insects in the world. How much do you guys know about them?

C: A little bit, a little bit.

S: I know that there is a a beetle that cannot lift 97 lbs.

US#01: 92 lbs.

S: Sure, whatever.

J: 9290 plus pounds.

S: Let's see what else you know about insects, Jay here. Here we go. Item number one, flight evolved independently 3 times among insects and emerged first among insects about 350 million years ago. Item number 2, termites are a type of cockroach, the one with the most complex social system. And then item number three, the largest insect to ever live was Mega Neuropsis permiana, a giant predatory dragonfly with a wingspan of 2.5 feet that likely haunted frogs and small mammals. All right, Mr. Confident over there, Jay, why don't you go first?

J: All right, Steve, we have flight evolved independently 3 times among insects and emerged first among insects about 350 million years ago. I mean, that sounds legit to me. I mean, flight is so unbelievably useful. There's such an advantage with it that I wouldn't be surprised if it did evolve independently a few times and you know, insects before, you know, larger animals, That makes sense too. So I think that's science. The second one, termites are a type of cockroach, the one with the most complex social system. OK, so there's two things in there that he's he's saying is that termites are a type of cockroach and that they have a very complicated social system. So what would be complicated about termites? I know some things about termites, Steve. I know that there there's also different kinds of termites. Yeah. I mean, why why wouldn't they have a complex social system? Lots of other insects do. So that's that's sounds perfectly cromulent to me. And the third one, the largest insect to ever live was Mega Superpoo and a giant predatory dragonfly with a wingspan of 2.5 feet that likely haunted frogs and small animalcules that damn now I remember reading something about like the large wingspan thing. I don't know how big it was. 2.5 feet sounds huge. There is something that is bothering me about this one because that sounds familiar. Large dragonfly and it haunted little animals. Question is do do dragonfly? Would they eat things like that? Would they eat things like that or they only eat other insects and fruit and stuff like that? I don't know. Dragonflies typically don't bother me when I'm outside. They just kind of see you when they fly away. I don't know what they're eating. I'm going to say that the Dragonfly 1 is the fiction, Steve. I don't think they, I don't think they eat small mammals and frogs.

S: OK, Bob.

B: Yeah, all of these seemed quite reasonable. Three like for insects 350 million years ago. That seems pretty spot on. And then two sure, termites are a type of cockroach. Yeah, that sounds like obvious. And then three, this mega Neuropsis Permiana, I'll call her, I'll call him Megan. Megan. Yeah, that that sounds. I remember reading about that years ago and that I don't specifically remember the name, but the the size seems about close to what I why I remembered. So I'm like, all right, what's going to nail me here? And then I went back to insect flight and you say here that it emerged 3 times independently. And I remember we did a recent one, Steve, where it was a similar angle and it was like, no, it would happen once and everything else was a have that as a common ancestor. I think that might that might apply here. So I'm going to say that that the insect one, well, not the insect one, the independent flight insect fiction.

S: All right, Evan.

E: Yeah, so the one that was striking me weird about the flight evolution is the 350 million years ago. How do we know we have a fossil? We do. We have winged fossils from back then. I can't recall anything that old with wings. I mean that that's my, you know, I'm, I'm basing it simply off my own memory, which is really not use, you know, useful here. However, I don't know, I would have thought I would have remembered as something dated 350 million that had that had wings flying, you know, wings for flight specifically. So that one, that's the reason why that one's getting me. The other one's termites are cockroaches. That's new information to me, but not, you know, shocking. And the other one about the large dragonfly. Yeah, I didn't know that it haunted frogs and small mammals. There were frogs and small mammals way back when this would have been alive. Right. I guess I'll go with Bob. I'm going to say the 350 million years ago 1 is going to be fiction.

S: OK, Aunt Cara.

C: I feel like you always do such a good job of making them all seem perfectly cromulent and also completely ridiculous.

S: That's the goal.

C: The same time a 2 1/2 foot dragonfly. That's bananas. But then again it was super super old and OK. Haunted frogs and small animals likely right? We don't really know. But I do think dragonflies are carnivorous, so a really big one would eat bigger stuff, right? I want that one to be science. Termites being a type of cockroach, I have no idea. I don't remember reading about this but I guess why wouldn't they be more like cockroaches than ants for example? And they are really social. And then Bob and Evan both think that the flight evolute. So I remember learning a long time ago 4 like that powered flight evolved 4 times and I don't remember. I think it was like bugs, birds, bats and something that doesn't start with AB. Oh, like that. Not dinosaurs though, Like I'm flying, flying reptiles, right, Because those wouldn't be bats or birds, reptiles like tears, like pterodactyls and stuff. So if that's true, then did they break down bugs into multiple times? Maybe, but maybe not. I'm sure my knowledge is very outdated here, but I guess that one I'm the least. I don't know that one. I think. I think I'm gonna go with the guys because I got to go last. So sorry. Sorry Jay, you're on your own on this one.

S: No worries. All right, so you all agree on the middle 1, so we'll start there. Termites are a type of cockroach, the one with the most complex social system. You guys all think this one is science and this one is science. This is correct. Weird they didn't always think this. Termites were put into their own order, but then DNA analysis showed that they are in fact cockroaches, so that they have. Now they've been placed within the cockroach order. Termites are cockroaches. Cockroaches to have are not as social as termites are. Other cockroaches are some there? You think of them as kind of solitary, but they do have some social interaction with each other. Most do not have complex social interactions, but termites, you know, have a nest with the division of castes and the queen and division of Labor and all that stuff. They have a very complicated social structure, more like ants, for example, than other cockroaches. All right, so let's go go back to #1 Flight evolved independently 3 times among insects and emerged first among insects about 350 million years ago, meaning that it evolved among insects before any non insect flight. You're right. The other three origins of flight are pterodactyls, bats and birds. And then there's all of the insect flight, the insects, you know, again, devolved flight first. The question is.

C: Yeah, how many times?

S: Does every single insect that flies have a common ancestor or not?

C: Hope so. That's the.

S: Question right, So are dragonflies and butterflies and? Orniths. All have a common ancestor with wings. That's the question.

C: What's the answer?

S: And the answer is, this one is the fiction. It is the fiction because yes, they all have. There was a one common ancestor with flight, and all flying insects evolved for all insects with wings. Many insects are secondarily flightless, like most cockroaches. There are some cockroach species that do fly. Most do not fly. They have wings. They have wings, but they don't fly. So the wings have evolved to be more like armor. You know they're tough. Or they use them, you know. You know what most cockroaches use their rings for?

C: Not just to jump.

US#01: Or thermal regulation. Attracting mates?

S: Nope.

US#01: Detracting mates.

S: To to flip back upright when they land on their back.

US#01: No, come on. Internal.

C: Thing but they're so bad at it still.

S: That's absolutely ridiculous. No, no, no. That's the primary function. The other carrier, you're sort of right in terms of jumping for some cockroach species, glide with their wings. They don't have powered flight, but they'll, like, jump from a high place to a low place, and they'll sort of glide down with their wings. And then a few do have, like, actual powered flight. But most, Yeah, most just used to flip back around again. All right. Which means that the largest insects to ever live was Mega Neuropsis permiana, which lived in the Permian. If you can guess that a giant predatory dragonfly with the wingspan of 2 1/2 feet, that likely haunted frogs and small mammals. You have to see models of this thing like a person holding. It's, like, unbelievably huge. You gotta look at this, you know, foreign insect. These things were just ginormous. And you know why? You probably do. I know we've mentioned yes. Why were they so big?

B: Oxygen 30, oxygen 30. Something percent at that point.

U: What is it now?

S: 2020 Yeah 23.

E: 2135 then, 21 now.

S: Yeah, 30 to 35, Yeah, that's how it got in the early Permian. That's how high it got, 30 to 35%.

E: What if we lived in a 35%? Oxygen.

S: Yeah. We would have giant insects flying around. So insects, you know, they don't have fires, they don't have bungs. They just have openings called spiracules. And then they have little tunnels that bring the oxygen to their tissue. So it could only diffuse so far. And so the higher the oxygen concentration, the farther the oxygen can diffuse into the insect, the bigger the insect can be. They don't have adaptations, you know, for getting bigger by having circulation, circulating oxygen, right? So that was it. Bit more oxygen meant bigger bugs than they had to get small again when the oxygen levels dropped.

C: Imagine getting bit by one of those.

S: And how low did oxygen go at the end of the Permian?

E: Oh, that's a good question.

S: 16%. Oof.

C: Oh wow.

S: Yeah. It got really then it then it came back up to whatever 2123 wherever we are now. Yeah, but these things are cool. Look them up. Look at pictures of the mega Neuropsis permiana. They are awesome looking. Yeah, they basically ate like mice. Can you imagine like a bug flying down, grabbing a mouse and carrying it off. They were like birds. They basically filled the niche of birds.

B: You know, is that the insect that flew on the movie Caveman? Yes.

S: Oh gosh.

B: Lands lands on his chest and that's. Where I saw it, that's where I saw he. Squishes it and all the all the insect guts go all over, all over. That was nasty. Funny movie.

S: Man, basically that's what that was. Yeah. All right. Good job, guys.

Skeptical Quote of the Week (1:43:07)


“It is strange to reflect how much energy is thrown away in attempting to know the unknowable.”

 – — Joseph Barber Lightfoot, (description of author)


S: Evan, give us a quote.

E: It is strange to reflect how much energy is thrown away and attempting to know the unknowable that was written by Joseph Barber Lightfoot.

S: Is there a context to that quote?

E: Yeah, so he was, he was actually a biblical scholar. Lightfoot was. So I thought it was kind of interesting having having come from a mind like that. But he was apparently also an academic. They're saying that you know you're not. You're not supposed to spend time, you know, worrying so much about the mysteries of the universe, afterlife, and other abstract concepts. It's a futile effort, poor use of 1's energy, diverting attention from more tangible and meaningful pursuits.

S: But yeah, I just, I'm curious if there's more to say about it because like, what do you mean by unknowable? Something that's inherently unknowable, You know? I agree. It is kind of a waste of energy chasing things that are not even in their basic concepts, scientific or empirical.

E: Yeah, which is kind of one of the really the first sort of scientific and skeptical concepts I was I grasped early on in my in my journey.

S: But if you're just talking about things that are, that are currently unknown.

C: That we don't know now, yeah.

S: That's not necessarily a waste.

C: It's interesting too. It's, it's one of the biggest things that I think I talk to patients and even like friends and colleagues and stuff about when it comes to people who struggle with anxiety is I feel like one of the most pernicious aspects of sort of human behavior is obsessing over what other people are thinking without just asking them. Like so often people spend emotional and mental energy and cause a lot of internal strife by inventing the thoughts and the feelings of other people. And it's like in some respects it's unknowable because you can never think what somebody else is thinking in other specs. They can share with you to the extent that they're willing to share, but it is it's such a futile practice and it causes so much pain.

E: But because he says unknowable in this quote, I take that to me not unknown.

S: Yes, but that there.

E: Was a set of information. That is specifically unknowable and right.

S: Inherently unknowable.

C: Yeah. And in some ways, kind of even my example, I think it holds there because we inherently by definition can never actually know what someone else is thinking. We can only know what they tell us are thinking. Yeah, yeah.

S: Right, All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week. Sure, Steve, you got it. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe.


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  1. ↑ theconversation.com: Winning with misinformation: New research identifies link between endorsing easily disproven claims and prioritizing symbolic strength
  2. ↑ www.npr.org: U.S. measles cases continue to climb, with outbreaks across the country : NPR
  3. ↑ sciencebasedmedicine.org: Is (Conversion) Therapy Speech?
  4. ↑ www.sciencealert.com: Our Sun Is Becoming More Active And NASA Doesn't Know Why : ScienceAlert
  5. ↑ futurism.com: Scientists Say They May Have Just Detected a Wormhole From Another Universe
  6. ↑ en.wikipedia.org: Insect flight - Wikipedia
  7. ↑ www.insectslimited.com: Are termites cockroaches?
  8. ↑ www.geologyin.com: Meganeuropsis: The Largest Insect Ever Existed 'Giant Dragonfly' – Geology In
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