The Skeptics Guide #1018 - Jan 11 2025

Quickie with Steve: Primate Twins: News Items: Mars Sample Return, Unique Glacial Microbiomes, Transatlantic Tunnel, Alcohol Advisory; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Bird Flu Vaccine, Cryptid Mascots; Science or Fiction

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Speaker 01

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

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, January 8th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:50Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Cara Santa Maria.

• 0:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:55Speaker 05

  Good evening, everyone.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Cara, how you doing out there? I hear your whole world is on fire.

• 0:58Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God.

• 0:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely.

• 1:00Bob Novella?

  What's happening?

• 1:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's rough in LA today. I think I had a little too much confidence yesterday when I went to sleep. But I live in a part of LA. I live in LA proper, the city and the county, in a neighborhood called Eagle Rock, which is northeast LA. It's very, very close to Glendale, Pasadena. There is a raging fire in Altadena, which is just north of Pasadena, called the Eaton Fire, named after Eaton, I think Eaton Canyon, which is one of my favorite hikes that I used to go on, probably won't be able to go on it again. That fire is now at 10,600 acres, and there are evac orders in place for all of like

• 1:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Altadena, La Canyada, Flint Ridge, parts of Glendale and Pasadena, and a couple other places, Monrovia. And then there are evac warnings in place. I'd say the closest to me is about a mile away. I'm in a weird position where the perimeter of the area is actually covered in warnings, but there's sort of a beeline straight towards me that are orders, and that's just because the wind is blowing right in my direction right now. And has been all day. And then to the southwest of me is the even larger Palisades Fire, which right now is at 15,832 acres and it's burnt. Both of these fires, by the way, are 0% controlled. They're just burning uncontrollably right now. And there's

• 2:26Cara Santa Maria?

  a lot of suppression on the ground, but there's not much air suppression right now because the smoke is too thick. So they can't do what usually you would do during a wildfire, which is attack it from the sky. And right now I have a lot of friends, a lot of people that I know that either have lost everything or are evacuated and just hoping that when they come home, they won't have lost everything. The entire Pacific Palisades is on fire. And so is a fair amount of Topanga. Santa Monica has a lot of evac orders. These are major population centers. You know, these are places where people, hundreds of thousands of structures are probably going to be destroyed. There are also small fires popping up, like

• 3:10Cara Santa Maria?

  the Woodley Fire is 30 acres. They may have actually put that one out. They did. They put that one out. That's good. The Hearst Fire is 700 acres just north in the San Fernando Valley, like Silmar area. So if you look at a map of LA right now, and you lived in central LA, you would be surrounded on the northeast and the southwest by two massive infernos. I took a video from my roof and the smoke is everywhere because it's coming from all directions. Like outside, right now, I have to wear an N95. The inside of my house smells like a campfire.

• 3:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:43Cara Santa Maria?

  My Dyson air purifiers are working overtime. I had to replace the filter in one of them today because it said it was completely full. And there's ash all over the ground and I'm not even in an evac zone. The thing that I think we forget too about LA, I forget a lot of times, is like, the Palisades is like an hour away. Oh, it's really far away. Because that's how we measure, we measure in LA, we measure by time and traffic, but it's only like 20 miles away.

• 4:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 4:08Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, it's like, LA is big. It's really, really big, but these, these areas are not that far from each other. A lot of people have been asking me, like, is it, how is this happening? It's not fire. Season, but I think the thing to remember too is that in LA, fire season is different. Yes, technically, fire season is spring, summer, fall, but in LA, Santa Ana wind season is fall, winter, spring. And so historically, in my experience living here, the worst fires that I saw were like October, November. And yes, it's very odd that this is happening in January, but it's warm and it's dry and the wind. I hate love that some of the articles were using this language because I think it really sends it home. Hurricane force winds.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:53Cara Santa Maria?

  That's why this fire is spreading out of control. Yeah. Because the Santa Ana winds are gusting so hard and so fast.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Well, even though it's late in the year now, you know, it's the new year, but it's late in the season, I should say, the you guys still haven't had rain, so it's still dry.

• 5:09Cara Santa Maria?

  No, yeah, and we don't really, you know.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Basically, fire season has not ended yet. It ends when it rains and it hasn't rained.

• 5:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and it almost never rains enough here in LA to stay wet enough. You know what I mean? So we can, I like to say, yeah, fire season is when the Santa Anas are blowing. If the wind is blowing, it's fire season here, unless it's actively raining. But we knew it, right? Like, we all got the warnings and the chatter a couple of days ago, like, things are going to look bad, start to think about this, it could get bad, it could get bad, all the conditions are right. Yeah, I mean, there were no fires yet, but we knew it was going to be red.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  It all happened very quickly.

• 5:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, we knew it was going to be red flag warning, right? We're used to that, living in LA, like, red flag days, get ready, you know, don't be stupid. And there were some preemptive power cutoffs. A lot of people in LA don't have power right now. I don't know why I have power. I've been very luckily, the lights have flickered quite a bit, but I've been really lucky that I've maintained power. But yeah, we knew the conditions were going to be right, but you never know what's going to happen. I went to bed last night and the Eaton fire was 800 acres. So I was like, okay, there's a big fire pretty close to me, but it's, it's, you know, it's not that big. And the Palisades fire was about 3,000 acres when I went to bed last night. I woke up this morning and the Eaton fire was about 3,000 acres. And I was like, oh, God, it tripled overnight. And the Palisades fire

• 6:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Was holding, then the Palisades fire went up to 10,000. Then the Eaton fire just exploded to 10,000 plus. And now the Palisades fire is over 15,000. You just never know, you know, we keep an eye out. I'm, I have my go bag packed, my truck is ready to go. Trying not to use water, trying to maintain, because that's the other thing that we have to remember. These are wildfires happening in an urban center. And urban water supplies are not built for wildfire suppression.

• 6:58Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 6:59Cara Santa Maria?

  They're just not. We're running out of water, the hydrants can't handle it. We've got people on, on, you know, boil recommendations because they don't have pressure or the water that's coming out isn't safe to drink. So I'm just trying to do what I can, not use water, not, not clog up the road. Stay put until I absolutely know that it's unsafe to stay put anymore. Then I'll get out there in my truck and I'll drive to where I can breathe and I'll, um, I'll camp. You know, I won't take up a hotel room. And I thank goodness I have a big stash of N95s, you know, from that other horrible thing that we all went through. It's apocalyptic.

• 7:34Bob Novella?

  Save some of those for the bird flu.

• 7:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, exactly. So yeah, I mean, people who are listening right now can't see it, but I did post on my Insta, some videos from my roof and, you know, just some of the air quality. When I woke up this morning, the AQI was 375. I've never seen it that high in my life. Like a bad day in LA is like 80, 90, maybe 110, but that's like unhealthy for sensitive groups, right? Like 80, 90 is just like, okay, the air quality is bad today. It's pretty smoggy. 375 is like very dangerous. So fun times, great open to the show, huh?

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Well, let's, let's pivot to some, some good news. Did you guys hear that Bill Nye was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

• 8:13Cara Santa Maria?

  I did.

• 8:14Bob Novella?

  That was wonderful. We, we need to send him, um, congratulations from this to you.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's nice to see, you know, um, Biden presented it to him for, obviously for his, because he is a beloved science communicator.

• 8:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah, and environmental activist.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  And yes, which I'd of course totally agree with.

• 8:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  So it's good to see science educators be recognized, you know, at that level.

• 8:34Jay Novella?

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, Bill is out there relentlessly communicating science, teaching people. About what reality is, I mean, it's, he's one of the very few that have broken through and have a global presence and we, you know, I couldn't encourage him more to keep going.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  He always makes critical thinking a centerpiece of anything he's talking about. He always incorporates it. That's so important.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  All right. Well, I'm going to start us off with a quickie. This is an interesting question. So most primates give birth to singletons, right? To one child at a time, not just humans, most primates do that. There are a few species of primates which tend to give birth to twins. Some lemurs, marmosets, for example. Now, it was believed that since most primates give birth to one child at a time, that that's the rule. And that the, you know, the marmosets and lemurs giving birth of twins or multiple births, that that was the exception, that they evolved that after, you know, the common ancestor of primates. It turns out though, that it may be the opposite, that

• 9:41Speaker 02

  giving birth to twins was the, a feature of the primate common ancestor. And that most primates independently evolved, giving birth to only one child at a time. You might be thinking, how do we know how many children our primate ancestors have had, right? That's not something that typically fossilizes, right? Unless we happen to catch.

• 10:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, like a pregnant.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, a family, you know, fossilized together, which is not, not typical. We have, we have no idea. How do you guys think they did it?

• 10:13Speaker 05

  How did they do it?

• 10:14Jay Novella?

  No idea.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  So they just, they just surveyed, you know, they gathered all the information about extant mammal species, mammal groups, and they can figure out from that how likely it is that the, yeah, the last common ancestor of all primates, whether they likely gave birth to, to single or multiple children. So based on that analysis, basically mapping it out, you know, the changes in the, in the mammalian line, they said, yeah, the, the common ancestor probably gave birth to, to twins or to multiple births, and then different lines within primates later developed.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Only giving single birth. Now, why do you think that is? So therefore, if it evolved multiple times independently, there probably was some evolutionary, some selective pressure for that. So what do you think that is?

• 11:04Speaker 05

  Mortality rate?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, but why? And you could also think about the, like, the marmosets and why they might be the exception.

• 11:10Cara Santa Maria?

  You mean of having fewer?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Well, marmosets still have twins.

• 11:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, okay.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Most other primates will have a single birth.

• 11:16Cara Santa Maria?

  But like, I'm sorry, what are you asking about?

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Why? So why did evolving only one, giving birth to only one child at a time evolve independently so many times within primates?

• 11:26Bob Novella?

  Well, resources, scarce resources. You don't want to have to feed two kids.

• 11:30Speaker 05

  Health of the bearer of the mother.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, everyone's closer. So the idea is, this is their thinking, because based upon the species that still give birth to multiple kids and those that give birth to one, it's basically head size, right? The bigger primates with the bigger heads all give birth to one child at a time. Only the tiny ones still give birth, like marmosets, give birth to multiple offspring at a time.

• 11:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, because how often when a human has triplets, are they able to? Like, you couldn't do a home birth with, like, that's a hospital emergency.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  There's also a huge risk of being premature.

• 12:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  That's, I think, the number one cause of premature births is twins, right?

• 12:10Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I'm a twin and I was a month premature, so yeah. That tracks.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Well, that's anecdotal, but yeah, statistically, yeah, it's true. It is statistically true. So that's the idea, yeah, so primates got bigger, we got big brained. You started giving birth to only one child at a time, even though probably our common ancestor gave birth to twins or multiple offspring. And that still persisted among the smaller primates, some of the smaller primates, because they didn't have the same issue, the same selective pressure of having to squeeze out a huge kid. But I find, well, the thing I found most interesting about that is that they were able to figure out that our common ancestor probably typically had twins just from mapping out extant species, you know? All right, Jay, tell us about NASA's plans to return samples from Mars.

• 12:56Jay Novella?

  I don't quite remember when we talked about this. It might have been over a year ago, but I do remember us discussing the idea that NASA is right now and has been collecting regular samples on Mars and they're putting that, those samples into tubes for later pickup.

• 13:14Speaker 05

  Yes. Yeah, we did talk about this.

• 13:16Jay Novella?

  Yeah, like what does that mean? So there was a plan, but it turned out it was too expensive. So NASA announced that they made a significant revision to its Mars sample return program, which is also called MSR, right? Mars Sample Return. The goal in the revision was simply to reduce costs and to actually make the mission happen sooner. You know, like the original thing was 2040 and they said, you know, we could, we could do it cheaper and we could do it faster. They think that they could do it in the 2030s now. The original plan was estimated at 11 billion with a projected return date, like I said, somewhere in the 2040s. This was eventually considered way too expensive and, and much too much time to wait for these samples. So what they did was they went back to the drawing board

• 14:00Jay Novella?

  and came up with a completely different strategy on how to do it. So I think you can't really appreciate this unless you know what the original mission was. And, and pay attention to how complicated this is. So they had to create a retrieval lander, that retrieval lander, and I mean, this thing lands on the surface of Mars. It had to be equipped with two small helicopters to go and collect the sealed sample tubes left by Perseverance. Then it needed a robotic arm to load the sample tubes into a rocket onboard the lander. The lander was also going to carry the Mars ascent vehicle, M A V, which launches the samples up into, you know, into orbit around, around the planet. Now

• 14:41Jay Novella?

  that's a big deal right there. So the revised plan is that they absolutely abandoned the helicopters and the sample retrieval lander. They're, they're going to focus on two alternative approaches for the lander. So the one is the sky crane, which we, again, we've talked about this on the show before for other missions. So what they would do is they would Would adapt a landing system similar to the Curiosity and Perseverance rover missions, where a rocket slows down the descent and the sky crane lowers the payload to the surface. So the private sector collaboration here would be that they'd partner with the commercial companies to design and develop a new lander, potentially using a SpaceX Starship or a similar heavy lift vehicle.

• 15:23Jay Novella?

  And then the sample handling would be they want to investigate cleaning the sample tubes on the Martian surface to simplify the return process. I'm not exactly sure what that means. What do you guys think that means?

• 15:34Bob Novella?

  Well, as opposed to doing it within the vehicle that's picking it up, right?

• 15:38Speaker 05

  For to avoid, is it a contamination issue?

• 15:41Jay Novella?

  So they want to clean those tubes because there's going to be particles and dust and everything on the outside of the tubes and that could contaminate the return capsule or interfere with the analysis that's going to happen later when it is returned to Earth. So those tubes actually need to be cleaned. So the proposal would be to clean the tubes on the surface of Mars before they're shuttled back to Earth. Now, the power source here, they would switch from solar power to nuclear power, which would ensure reliability and resilience against any Martian dust storms, which I didn't realize how significant that was, you know, because the atmosphere on Mars, as Bob likes to say, is unbelievably thin.

• 16:23Jay Novella?

  You know, even a major, major, major like weather event on Mars is it's just, there's just not a lot of atmosphere there to push around.

• 16:30Bob Novella?

  A thousandth the pressure.

• 16:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  No, it's a little bit less than 1%. I think it's 0.1%.

• 16:36Bob Novella?

  Okay, so 100.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  It's less than 100.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  Less than a crap.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  But it's very dry. But it's very dry and there are dust storms that engulf the planet. And yeah, every time you get a dust storm in, it completely covers any solar panels.

• 16:49Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but it's not, it's not going to knock your ship over, preventing you from leaving.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Probably not.

• 16:54Speaker 05

  Oh, here we go, the Martian.

• 16:56Bob Novella?

  The major mistake in the entire book.

• 16:58Jay Novella?

  So to summarize the new plan, they'd have a sky crane that would lower the lander. They would have, instead of the helicopters to retrieve the samples, they would have a lander, would be a direct mechanism from a lander. Which seems a lot simpler, right, than these two helicopters. I mean, it's cool. It's cool that they'd have helicopters there, but this makes more sense for it to be a vehicle. I guess unless they're super far away, I guess that's a big consideration. So the original plan was solar powered. Now the new one have nuclear power. 11 billion versus 6 to 7 billion. Still sounds like a lot, but you know, saving four or five billion dollars. It's, that's a very nice amount of money to save. The timeline was 2040 with the new one being in the 2030s.

• 17:42Jay Novella?

  So, I mean, you know, it could be, it could be up to 10 years time saving. You know, even if it was five years, it's still a significant amount of time. And then, um, you know, there would be a, uh, instead of minimal or no private sector role, there would be a significant role in the lander development, which is, it's always good to farm out, you know, to the private sector. Um, that is the way that things are going at NASA big time. So that's a, that's a priority for them. So I, I think this is exciting. I mean, first of all, to have the nerve to say, we're going to re-engineer this. You know, we, we already sussed this thing out and spent an enormous amount of time and energy figuring it out. And it's good to know that they're in a position now where they could say, nope, we're not doing that. Let's start over again. We could do better.

• 18:27Jay Novella?

  And that's what they did here. It's 2025. I mean, you know, they could be retrieving these samples. You know, five years sounds really short when you think about it, but it could be. They could do it in five years, possibly. Um, I would say 10 years on the outside, but that would be amazing. I mean, we get those samples, you know, this is going to be our first real deep investigation of, of the regolith on Mars and man, what, what will they find?

• 18:52Speaker 05

  Boy.

• 18:53Jay Novella?

  You know?

• 18:53Speaker 05

  The, the evidence of the former.

• 18:56Jay Novella?

  I know.

• 18:56Speaker 05

  Life that used to live there. Uh, it'd be incredible.

• 18:59Jay Novella?

  It would, that would be a game changer, right?

• 19:02Speaker 05

  Sure would.

• 19:03Jay Novella?

  We live in an exciting time for space travel. We really do. I think it's really cool. I mean, thinking that we're going to have a spacecraft try to fly through, you know, the ejecta from one of Jupiter's moons to see if there's life there. You know, that is so cool.

• 19:18Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Jay.

• 19:20Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Bob, tell us about this unique microbiome.

• 19:23Bob Novella?

  Surely, researchers have studied in detail for the first time the microbial ecosystems that exist in mountain top glacier fed streams. These microbiomes are not only different than they expected, they're also among Earth's most vulnerable ecosystems in the face of climate change. Really, truly. These two papers were published in Nature and Nature of Microbiology. A lot of this research was led by Tom Batten, professor in environmental science and the head of one of Switzerland's federal institutes of technology called the River Lab, which in turn is part of the Vanishing Glaciers Project. Now, these researchers decided to look into these ecosystems because these glacier fed streams are obviously very important.

• 20:08Bob Novella?

  Think about it. They're essentially water towers for downstream ecosystems. This includes bringing fresh water to, from what I read, billions of people. That's crazy. Billions of people benefit from this water. But it also acts as a buffer during seasonal variations, right? Because if you're experiencing dry seasons, then this could help buffer, you know, buffer that water availability by still, you know, having them exist. I mean, they're critically important, not only for water consumption, but also this agriculture, hydropower, fisheries, et cetera, et cetera. Glacier fed streams also play important roles in carbon cycling and nutrient cycling and more. So, yeah, these are really critically important.

• 20:49Bob Novella?

  And they're also probably the most extreme fresh water ecosystems on the planet. Think about it. You've got this, you've got this fresh water coming from glaciers. So it's near freezing. They also have very low nutrient concentrations. And in addition to that, there's also no sunlight during the winter. And even when the summer comes around and the light will make a reappearance. Or be more, you know, or be stronger. There's also strong UV rays. So good luck eking out in existence in one of these. And that's why it's probably one of, they say it's in one of the most extreme freshwater ecosystems on the planet. But nobody had seriously looked at the microbial life that was part of that water. You may be thinking of bacteria and you'd be right.

• 21:33Bob Novella?

  But there's, they've also found bacterial biofilms, archaea, fungi, algae and viruses. So it's just chock full of these microbes, these important microbes. And fascinating and complex. They spent five years going to 170 different separate glacier fed streams to collect and analyze these samples. They focused, it seems, a lot on the abundant biofilms because they're just the most prevalent form of life there that they could focus on. But so they focus on them to a certain extent, more than the others. But they found, when they looked closely at everything, they found unique microbiomes unlike anything that's been seen in other of these so-called cryosphere systems. Cryosphere, I love that word.

• 22:18Bob Novella?

  It's part of the earth that are frozen, right? Snow, ice sheets, icebergs, permafrost. It's all over the planet. And these specific microbiomes are different than all of the other ones. They found typically, almost half of the bacteria that they analyzed were specific to just the one mountain range that they were on. Or in some cases, it was unique to that particular glacier fed stream. Just not found anywhere else on the planet. Most interesting though, that I found was that these microbes had a high degree of adaptability. Researcher Greg McChoud said, "It's fascinating to see the broad range of adaptive strategies that microorganisms have developed to survive in this extreme environment."

• 23:00Bob Novella?

  So these organisms are best described, it seems, as metabolic generalists. They could metabolize organic carbon, solar energy, minerals, and possibly they think even gases. And all that's quite extraordinary. Jay, that would be like you living off of not only meatballs, but you could also photosynthesize like plants. And you could also eat methane or hydrogen gas. And if you're still hungry, you go in the backyard and eat some rocks. That's kind of like what they can do. And of course, the level, this level of adaptability is important. This is especially important if you live where they live in such an ecosystem that's so sparsely filled with with things that they can use.

• 23:43Bob Novella?

  Or there's lots of different things that they could use, but they had to evolve to take advantage of all the different types of sparse nutrition that was actually available to them. So incredible. Now, the very sad angle to this interesting discovery, of course, is that glacier shrinkage from climate change is putting these unique microbiomes at incredible risk. Professor Batten said, having spent the past few years traveling across the Earth's mountaintops, I can say we're clearly losing a unique microbiome as glaciers shrink. I just get so mad at this stuff. Ah, the United Nations has declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers Preservation, and this is obviously critically important for these scientists because saving glaciers

• 24:26Bob Novella?

  not only saves all their innumerable downstream downstream benefits that I listed, but also, of course, saving these priceless biomes. Batten has also called for a biobank to be created to protect these and other microbiomes in danger. So even if we lose them in the natural world, which, to be honest, to me, seems almost inevitable at this point. I'm just throwing that down. At least future scientists, though, will be able to see what their genomes were like. And who knows what they might be able to do using the biotechnology of the future. I really hope we don't lose these. And and the other impacts, the other benefits that we have from them, like, you know, like drinking water for billions of people.

• 25:06Bob Novella?

  I mean, that also, I can't even imagine what would happen if these glaciers went so, you know, disappeared to such a degree that these these streams were no longer being fed primarily, you know, by them. That's not the only place they get water, but I mean, it would be pretty bad, I would guess.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Bob, how genetically unique are they? They have a lot of unique abilities, but are they, do they fit within known groups?

• 25:30Bob Novella?

  Half of them, the other half that they found. Were they described as more cosmopolitan, so you would find them in a lot of different in, you know, on different places over the earth. But these, these were these mountain tops though, they, they, they compared them to islands, you know, these are kind of like isolated. And so you can get some unusual, you know, unusual genomes that never evolved anywhere else. And so a good, a good chunk of that was stuff that is only found on that, like I said, only on that mountain range, or even specifically in the, the glacier fed stream that they founded.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Right. Okay. Evan, are we gonna build a tunnel from New York to London?

• 26:11Speaker 05

  What a great question. And a lot of factors go into that equation, perhaps 20 trillion of them. How could you even do that? I mean, let's, let's put cost aside. Let's, we'll get to cost. How could you even do that? Do you remember we talked years ago about point to point rocket travel?

• 26:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 26:31Speaker 05

  Which could potentially allow for suborbital flights between, you know, like Los Angeles to Sydney, right? Fat, much faster than, than airplanes.

• 26:40Bob Novella?

  Do you remember the rocket? I would specifically remember the rocket that they were, that they were thinking of using for that point to point. And it was, I remember it was a beautiful rocket. I forget, I forget the name of it, but it was, ah, that would have been so cool. Can you imagine? Yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 05

  I could have sworn it was Elon and SpaceX that were designing something like that. I have no idea what happened to it though. There doesn't seem to be much news about that lately. It was, this was almost 10 years ago that they started talking about that. Maybe they're still.

• 27:08Bob Novella?

  Oh, more than that dude, I, I literally remember this being discussed probably in the late 1990s. When, when I first heard about it, this is before.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  Just the concept itself, sure.

• 27:19Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. Because NASA wasn't going to do that. It would have had to have been a private company that would have gone ahead and built something like that. However, the, the news is not about how to get, you know, from, from there in a rocket, but rather getting from New York to London. Traveling below the Atlantic Ocean in, in the form of a tunnel. Oh my gosh. Now you, you remember the tunnel?

• 27:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  You know, the, uh, the, when that, when that first opened in what 1994, I think it was.

• 27:49Bob Novella?

  Have gone through it. Really cool.

• 27:50Speaker 05

  And that was, that was like the engineering masterpiece, you know, of, of, of the 1990s perhaps. I mean, this, but, but a tunnel from say, New York to London, that, that would make the tunnel look like a high school science project by, by comparison. Here's what you would have to do if you were to, if this project were to happen. You, you would use trains and they would be what? The magnetic levitation trains, the maglevs, and they would be built, or they would, they would travel within these vacuum tubes, right? Reaching speeds of up to 5,000 miles per hour. And at that pace, you could get from New York to London or back, if, or London to New York in less than an hour, just under an hour,

• 28:32Speaker 05

  which would be freaking, just incredible to think about. I guess if you're going to dream, you dream big, right?

• 28:39Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 05

  Three miles beneath the Atlantic Ocean was probably what, what they're thinking about, where this would have, have to be built. Some were perhaps speculating, you could do it on the ocean's surface, but more of what I've read said, no, you, this would have to be submerged, um, in that vacuum sealed environment. The magnetic levitation system reduces friction, maximizes energy efficiency for the trains as they cloud, travel within this closed system.

• 29:07Bob Novella?

  Now, are we talking beneath the seafloor or suspended within the ocean?

• 29:12Speaker 05

  Well, three, at depths of up to three miles, it would be where parts of it would, would lie. So, I mean, that is the seafloor, right? For, for a good chunk of the Atlantic, I believe is the, is three miles. I can't imagine there being too much variation in the elevation. You wouldn't necessarily want to be going up and down. You'd probably want to go pretty straight for as long, as long as you possibly could, except for heading on down and heading, heading on back up to the surface. Yeah. So the cost, right? 20 trillion would be, is the estimated price tag for this. And, you know, that's just the estimated price tag. I mean, how many times do projects?

• 29:45Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 29:45Speaker 05

  Go over budget? They always, almost always go over.

• 29:48Bob Novella?

  Over 50 trillion, 50 trillion, I say.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  Sure. 50. Remember the big dig in Boston? That was, I mean, that alone, that would say, it's a $4 billion project. Three years later, oh, it's $8 billion, just four years later, $16 billion. That thing kept doubling and doubling until it was like, oh gosh. In fact, they had, they spent so much money on it, they had to sort of not really have an opening ceremony for it. They couldn't afford it because they used all the money to build it. Um, where would you get these materials capable withstanding that, that level of severe ocean pressure? I mean, you, you would have to come up with.

• 30:23Bob Novella?

  Asteroid belt?

• 30:24Speaker 05

  Right? I mean, just, and, and you're building it in the face of seismic activity as well, you know, we're not, it's not a static system. Sure. You know, structural failures, the natural disasters, the earthquakes, and how would, and the maintenance on this thing, the heat that it would generate. They said that these hypersonic speeds would generate so much heat, you would have to have advanced systems that don't even exist yet to dissipate that heat safely.

• 30:51Bob Novella?

  Well, heat from what though? Because there's no friction, because it's an evacuated to partial vacuum. So the heat from the engines?

• 30:58Speaker 05

  The speed, they're just, from what I read is just the speed of the trains themselves generate the heat, even though, even without the friction.

• 31:05Bob Novella?

  It's gotta be from the.

• 31:07Speaker 05

  So the pressure of the environment? Magnetic field? Yeah, it could be. I didn't read, I didn't read that deeply into it, but they said, they, they said there's a heat problem with this and that would, and you would have to perhaps invent some new technology on how to deal with, with that alone. So you're, you're not only dealing with a project that is so immense in scale, but you're talking about having to introduce new technologies that have not even been invented yet. So that, which makes this an even more massive project. And what is this? And then what? The environmental impact on this? What will this do to, to, to sea life? How, how do you know? How, how could you, how could you forecast that, the damage that, that it would, that it would take? And then the, and then of course, the big fact, what's the envi-

• 31:49Speaker 05

  what's the economic viability of something like this? You know, it takes, I looked it up. Your bridge, you know, like a bridge built in New York or wherever, you know, Baltimore or Tampa, wherever. It takes decades to recoup the cost of building that one bridge, right? Which in some cases is what? Like a half mile or three quarters of a mile or something like that. So how, how long before the companies or the governments combined would dissipate? Invest in this thing would be before they saw their money back. That could be hundreds of years. Hundreds of years. And who, how could you, how could a company, how could companies exist with that sort of return on investment?

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Countries would have to do it, companies.

• 32:31Speaker 05

  It would be, it would have to be, it would have to become a real cooperation of, of all the major countries on the, on the planet to do this.

• 32:39Bob Novella?

  But one benefit.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  So many obstacles.

• 32:41Bob Novella?

  There'd be, definitely would be some benefits though, in new technology, new, new patents, new ideas that then you could then apply to other things and make money. So that definitely would walk away with some interesting data to apply in industries, potentially even to apply elsewhere. But still, yeah, fifty, like forty trillion dollars, whatever they end up spending, spending is kind of, yeah, it's ridiculous. I mean, who could risk that?

• 33:06Speaker 05

  It's all, it's all theory, obviously now, and just for discussion, it has been making rounds in the news lately. It made also a couple of weeks ago, it popped up, but lately it's been re-discussed. I don't know what the, uh, but the convention happening, uh, the, what is it? The, uh, technology convention that happens every January. I don't know if that's part of this sort of, uh, looking in, into this again, or why it's coming up, why it's coming up in the news again now. But I, you know, I sort of, it's interesting to think about. I, I, I see this as pure science fiction though, uh, for the most part, really. And, and think about it, even if, if you were to undertake this, it would take so long, probably maybe a century or more to, to actually build. What other technology will come, would, would otherwise come along in the century that would perhaps mitigate that?

• 33:50Speaker 05

  Like you could perhaps go back to the, right, the rocket technology.

• 33:53Bob Novella?

  Hypersonic airlines, first of all, would be the far, far cheaper. And we're, we're approaching closer to that possibility every day. Um, that money could, could accelerate that whole process greatly, um, right there. I mean, geez, because they, I mean, they've got great designs now for, for, for, um, supersonic planes that don't produce the, the crazy sonic booms that, that limit their, their viability over, you know, going over land. I mean, that seems like a no brainer to just put the money in, far less money into that.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  I'm going to predict this is never going to happen.

• 34:30Speaker 05

  I would agree.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think.

• 34:32Speaker 05

  I'll put my nickel down there.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  The risks, the expense are not going to be worth it. And as you, by the time we even just started this project, we could be having supersonic jets flying back and forth.

• 34:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  The advantage is something of the advantage.

• 34:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that's not to say there aren't other tunnel. There are other tunnel projects that are in the works in Europe and other and other places. They are very expensive and they are going to use this technology. The magnetic levitation system technology to do it. But, you know, I mean, we're just talking about, you know, maybe 10 miles as opposed to, you know.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  But there are already maglev trains.

• 35:04Speaker 05

  Ocean. Yeah, there are. Yeah, China. What? How fast did that one in China go? It says here two, 623 miles per hour. That was the record speed achieved last year.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 35:15Speaker 05

  With its T flight system.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  I don't think that's its operating speed, but yeah, that's.

• 35:19Speaker 05

  And there's another one called the European Hyperloop Hub, which completed a test in 2024 and apparently it achieved some very fast speeds as well. So, yeah.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, the operating, like the top operating speed, I think, is 268 miles per hour, from what I'm reading, for the Shanghai maglev. That's what we're talking about, which is fast for a train. And it's great for that kind of medium city to medium city to city travel, you know? We're not far enough to need a plane, but so far. But getting back to the tunnel, remember the point of the tunnel was that you could drive from mainland Europe to to Great Britain and back, right? There's no point in taking, taking a train. Then you could be taking a plane to go across.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  No one's, I don't think anyone's going to be driving their car from New York to London.

• 36:08Speaker 05

  Not, not on any regular basis or for anything other than publicity. You're right.

• 36:14Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:15Bob Novella?

  Yeah, this is a 22nd century technology.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 36:18Speaker 05

  In, yeah, feasibility zero, I would say.

• 36:21Speaker 02

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• 37:32Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. All right, guys, did you hear about the surgeon general's new advisory on alcohol?

• 37:40Bob Novella?

  I did.

• 37:41Speaker 05

  I did as well.

• 37:42Bob Novella?

  I didn't even realize that that that cancer from alcohol was that much of a thing.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's it's interesting. So the quick story is that the surgeon general, and you guys know his name.

• 37:56Speaker 05

  Oh, no.

• 37:57Bob Novella?

  Doctors, Doctor something.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 05

  I should see Everett Coop.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Vivek Murthy, Vivek Murthy.

• 38:04Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  He's the current surgeon, surgeon general, yeah. A little outdated. Released a new advisory warning between warning about the links between alcohol use and cancer. So this is just an advisory. This is and there are policy recommendations in here, but it doesn't have any legislative power. Of course, that would require Congress to actually pass laws, but they're advising a few things. One is that warning labels on alcohol be updated to reflect the latest data on the risk of alcohol to certain types of cancer and that, you know, we try to educate the public about these risks. Most people don't really know. And also just specifically to lower the recommended amounts of what is

• 38:47Speaker 02

  considered safe alcohol. So right now, the standard sort of public health recommendation is for moderate alcohol use is no more than one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men. Just based upon the evidence. And but they're saying that even at that level, even at that level, there's a significant increased risk of of certain cancers and therefore that we probably should be lowering that level of what is considered the recommended safe amounts of alcohol to drink. So let me throw some stats at you. So it is estimated that alcohol use causes is responsible for in excess 100,000 cases of cancer per year in the United States, leading to

• 39:32Speaker 05

  Hundred thousand.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Hundred thousand, leading to 20,000 excess cancer deaths. That is greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year. So that's

• 39:43Speaker 05

  Oh, if you, oh, you would have gotten me on a science fiction with that one, probably.

• 39:48Bob Novella?

  That would have been a good one.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, we had a huge campaign to limit

• 39:51Speaker 05

  Tobacco.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  Drinking while driving and yet the problem. But of course, this is, it's the 13,500 now, you know, after we successfully sort of reduced those numbers. But still, deaths from cancer is a bigger problem. I did liken this to the, you know what year, what year the US Surgeon General released their first report on the health risks of smoking and tobacco use?

• 40:13Speaker 05

  The first year, probably, it must have been 1965?

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Close, 64, 64. And what do you think this, do you have, what percentage of Americans smoked in 1964?

• 40:24Speaker 05

  Adults, 70.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  This is just all Americans. It didn't say adults, the stats I'm looking at.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  But I don't know if, I don't know if they count babies, but

• 40:32Speaker 05

  Probably about 70%.

• 40:33Bob Novella?

  30%?

• 40:34Speaker 05

  50, 50%?

• 40:35Speaker 02

  42%.

• 40:36Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Can you imagine?

• 40:38Speaker 05

  There was everywhere. Did I tell you, I don't know if I said this on a show or not. I mean, you know, my father was a smoker most of his life, two packs a day. I mean, to the point where not only was there ashtrays kind of everywhere in the house that was normal in the 70s, but he had a musical box, a dispenser, a cigarette dispenser. You'd press a button, a tune would play and the, like a bear would hand you a cigarette, like, almost like a cuckoo clock.

• 41:02Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God.

• 41:03Speaker 05

  Like, that was the culture, that was the smoking culture. It was all like, so

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that there was a smoking culture, basically. It was, it was accepted, it was baked in. Now, the number is down to what? What do you think is the percentage of Americans who smoke?

• 41:19Speaker 05

  Less than 10.

• 41:20Bob Novella?

  15%?

• 41:21Speaker 02

  11, 11.5.

• 41:23Bob Novella?

  Oh, wow. That's great, guys. That's one, that's awesome.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  From forty-two percent to eleven point five percent. That is great.

• 41:28Speaker 05

  Thank goodness.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  So, the question is, is are we seeing the beget? Of course, that took decades, you know, to bring that about, and it did require a cultural shift, which took place over time. Uh, you remember the whole secondhand smoke thing? That that took us, that was a huge amount of pressure on, you know, banning smoking in public places, et cetera.

• 41:46Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Uh, so, anyway, you know, are we, are we going to see the similar kind of cultural shift? A lot of people are skeptical about that. I mean, yeah, drinking is so baked into American culture, that's not going to be an easy change.

• 42:00Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Um, but it, this could, this could have an effect, you know, just raising public awareness. So, a, a recent, uh, Gallup poll found that only forty-five percent of, of, uh, people survey, surveyed said that one to two drinks per day is bad for one's health. Forty-three percent had made no difference, eight percent actually said it was good for your health. These numbers are, are improved from two thousand and sixteen, where they were twenty-six percent said it was bad, fifty-one percent said neutral, nineteen percent said good. That's a pretty rapid shift over the last eight, nine years, but...

• 42:35Bob Novella?

  Well, for years, Steve, weren't they saying like a drink or two a day is actually beneficial? I mean, I remember hearing that for years.

• 42:41Speaker 05

  Glass of wine, good for your heart, those kinds of things.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that data's been largely, um, well, it's, it's, it's not clear, you know, if there is, and there's like, there's the red wine thing, but there's also like just small amounts of alcohol may lower your cholesterol, but...

• 42:56Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  There, it's...

• 42:57Speaker 05

  Uh, the recent stuff I've been reading say there are new zero benefits to alcohol, zero.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  That has not held up. The part of the problem was, so, part of the problem was, very interesting aside, like, if you ask people, "Do you drink or not?"

• 43:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  And, and how much do you drink? You have the teetotalers who don't drink at all, and they have a slightly higher, like, death rate than people who drink a little bit. So, it's like, oh, people who are drinking a little bit is protective, but you know what they found? That the, the non-drinking group included ex-drinkers who already wrecked their...

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Their health by by

• 43:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Basically, ex alcoholics. If you remove them, the alleged benefits of drinking alcohol goes away. So anyway, this is it's very hard to answer these questions because you can't do the experiment. Right? You cannot do an experiment where you force people to drink a certain amount or not to drink or whatever. Same thing with like eating salt or with, you know, smoking or whatever. You just can't do that kind of experiment. So we have to do observational studies, which are correlational. They can't establish in and of themselves, cause and effect. And there's a lot of confounding factors. And so it takes years, decades to kind of build a case for this sort of thing. Uh, and it's often disputed for a long period of time, et cetera, et cetera.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Uh, but where we are now is that it's pretty clear that there is a linear relationship. You know, whereas the more you drink, the higher your risk for certain kinds of cancers. Let's see, those include breast, colorectal, esophageal, liver, mouth, pharynx and larynx. Uh, so some of those make kind of make sense. You know, the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, that's where the alcohol goes. We know alcohol has negative effects on the liver. The question is like, how big is that risk and when does it kick in? Right? And that's where there, you know, again, because this is all observational data, you can sort of argue about the exact number. But the surgeon general is basing this new recommendations on systematic reviews of the literature showing that, yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  We could say now there's, there's a, there is a significant increase, uh, alcohol risk, even in cancer risk, even with these moderate levels of alcohol. It goes, the, the lower the risk, the harder it is to prove, right? There's harder it is to statistically establish it. The greater the risk, the easier it is to establish. It was always like, yeah, it's very clear at the high end. It gets increasingly muddy as you go to more and more moderate levels of alcohol. And then it's, which, which has to be the case. It doesn't mean that the effects are less real. It just means that they're harder to, to document statistically because they're smaller. You need bigger numbers, et cetera.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  They estimate, uh, in a release, they estimated that alcohol, uh, causes 3.5% of all cancers, which is interesting.

• 45:41Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  So not insignificant.

• 45:43Speaker 05

  3.5%.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:44Speaker 05

  That's not insignificant.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  So also, how many premature deaths per year do you think there are from all causes from alcohol in the US?

• 45:56Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 45:57Jay Novella?

  Like, the number, the number of premature deaths?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  The number of people who die prematurely.

• 46:01Speaker 05

  People who died before they're...

• 46:02Speaker 02

  And alcohol was a significant contributing factor to their death.

• 46:05Jay Novella?

  I mean...

• 46:06Speaker 05

  Oh, is it a percentage or is it a hard number?

• 46:08Jay Novella?

  Oh, my god, I mean, above a million.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  No, not in the US, it's 178,000 premature deaths per year, which is huge. That's a huge number.

• 46:19Jay Novella?

  That's huge.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  Worldwide, the figure is estimated to be 2.6 million, or 5% of deaths, which is a lot. The average reduction in lifespan is 24 years, so people who die early from alcohol lose 24 years of life on average.

• 46:35Speaker 05

  Holy moly, that's not...

• 46:36Speaker 02

  That's a lot.

• 46:37Speaker 05

  Like, smoking.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is, yeah.

• 46:39Speaker 05

  Smoking does to people.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  And now, the causes include cancer, as we said, direct alcohol poisoning, car accidents, heart failure, and liver damage. But also, it's estimated that 40% of violent crimes in the US are committed while under the influence of alcohol, and 48% of homicides are committed while under the influence.

• 46:59Speaker 05

  I mean, the negative basket fills up so much faster than anything in the positive basket, not even close.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  I mean, it's worse than all other recreational drugs combined. Even at the peak of the opioid epidemic, it was much less than alcohol-related.

• 47:12Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  I think the...

• 47:14Speaker 05

  To us. But, you know, I mean, a government has experimented before with trying to ban it on illegal...

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so no one's, no one's calling for prohibition to come back, right? I mean, that, that obviously was a failed, that social experiment's not gonna work. And just as a public health measure, those kind of things generally don't work. But, just like...

• 47:30Speaker 05

  So, we need more warning labels, we just do.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  With smoking, we didn't really ban smoking, we just said, okay, well, you can't advertise to kids, and, you know, you, you, and then we're gonna ban it in places where people would be forced to be exposed to second, secondhand smoke, etc. So, you know, we, we can't think about way, like, even if it's just informational at first, think about ways to start to shift the culture a little bit, just making people aware, it's like, yeah, you know, having one to two drinks a day is not safe, you know, and you, you could factor that into your decision-making about your habits, in terms of how much you're drinking.

• 48:06Speaker 05

  Remember synthol?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, synthol.

• 48:08Bob Novella?

  Just thinking about that.

• 48:09Speaker 05

  Does alcohol work the same way that sort of cigarettes work in which it changes brain chemistry? And like is feeds the addiction in the same, it's the same.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  It's absolutely addictive. Yeah.

• 48:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  It's not addictive in the same mechanism as tobacco, as nicotine is, but it is, it is addictive like, you know, cocaine and opiates are addictive.

• 48:29Speaker 05

  Can it be tweaked so that the addictive nature of it is taken away and you have a different product? Or is that it goes with the territory?

• 48:36Speaker 02

  It kind of goes with the territory. Yeah.

• 48:39Speaker 05

  So I guess that's the whole thing.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  The mind altering aspect of it is, is.

• 48:43Speaker 05

  Is why people do it.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Well, there's, it's psychologically addictive, behaviorally addictive, but also it is, you know, chemically addictive. Uh, and yeah, that I don't, I don't know if it'd be possible to make an addiction a non-addictive alcohol. I doubt, I don't even know if that's possible, you know, just in terms of, you know, just biologically. But I've never even heard anybody even attempting to do that. What we do have are drugs that make, that combine with alcohol to make you feel sick so that you won't drink.

• 49:13Jay Novella?

  How effective is that, Steve?

• 49:15Speaker 02

  It's very effective. You know, imagine if you took a drink and you get violently nauseated.

• 49:19Speaker 05

  It sounds like a Clark or Gorge almost, without the ultra violence thing.

• 49:23Bob Novella?

  It sounds like a great idea because all you need is willpower for three seconds to take that drug and then bam.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Well, they could also give you long acting versions as well. So this anti abuse is the name of it, is the brand name of the, of the drug. They're not saying not to, not to have occasional alcohol, you know, but just think about the overall. And so the two risky behaviors seem to be like regular daily alcohol use and binge drinking. You know, seem to be relatively equivalent. Yeah, just moderate your alcohol use. It's, it's like, it's a, a totally preventable cause of cancer and premature death. Which is of course, you know, what, where, where public health campaigns focus their efforts, right? On the totally preventable stuff, uh, but it is, it is remarkably hard to change people's behavior. It does take a cultural shift, you know, just putting out like PSAs doesn't cut it.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Doesn't have much of an effect. Although, having said that, even small effects can have huge absolute magnitude of effects, right? In other words, even if it's like, oh, we reduced it by 5%, that doesn't sound like a lot. That's still a lot of people, right? It's a lot of hospitalizations, that's a lot of morbidity we're avoiding, a lot of premature deaths, a lot of healthcare costs, et cetera, et cetera, societal costs in absolute numbers. So, you know, we take what we can get, but, um, yeah, it's really hard. It's hard to change people's behavior.

• 50:51Speaker 05

  Tough one with alcohol.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, more warning labels, though, I'm all in favor of that.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  But again, we did it with tobacco to a huge extent. You know, 42% to 11.5% is huge. That's a huge change.

• 51:03Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but imagine if we use the extreme labeling requirements that other countries use with cigarettes.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:10Bob Novella?

  I mean, like showing like, you know,

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Black lungs.

• 51:13Bob Novella?

  cancerous lungs, you know, on the label. Really, you can't make them, you can't make cute packaging for them in many countries.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  So, the thing is, though, that's the so-called scared straight approach, right? It doesn't really work, doesn't really work.

• 51:29Bob Novella?

  And we know that doesn't work. It's all about, it's all about your peers.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  It's about your peers, about the culture. Again, you gotta change the culture.

• 51:35Speaker 05

  Change the culture.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and also, just like, there are limited bans, right? There are bans in certain places. And it just becomes culturally unacceptable. Like, you'd like, then, the beginning of my career, you could smoke in the hospital. It was disgusting. You think about that, and now, like, you just can't do it. Like, there is no, I know there's zero smoking in the hospital. That was a cultural change, you know? In the, in the early 90s, we would still defer to a patient, you know? And now, it's like, nope, it's just not done.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  So, because it's a good movie, I love this movie. It's called The Serious Man. It's one of the Coen Brothers movies, it's one of their least, less well-known movies. But the opening scene, the guy's in the doctor's office going through, it's 1969, and he's in a doctor's office, 1969, he's going through a physical exam, and then, you know, going, getting, you know, pressed and looking in his eyes. And then they're sitting at he's at the doctor's at the desk and the patient's the other side of the desk and they're talking to talk about they're about to talk about what the doctors found. And the doctor lights up a cigarette and then offers the patient. It's like, oh my gosh, that really happened in the 1960s. That's crazy.

• 52:44Jay Novella?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 52:45Speaker 05

  Your doctor offered you a cigarette. I mean, it was hilarious and terrifying at the same time.

• 52:51Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that's all part of the the cultural shift that took place. All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time? All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.

• 53:18Jay Novella?

  You don't hear that every day.

• 53:19Speaker 05

  Can I guess?

• 53:20Jay Novella?

  Sure.

• 53:20Speaker 05

  Jiffy Pop popcorn.

• 53:22Jay Novella?

  Yeah, somebody guessed.

• 53:23Speaker 05

  Jiffy Pop?

• 53:24Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 05

  Did you guys ever? I never made it. Did you ever have an experience making Jiffy Pop popcorn?

• 53:30Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I've done it.

• 53:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, we did it.

• 53:32Speaker 05

  Did it work? It always seemed like the kind of thing like.

• 53:35Bob Novella?

  On the stove? Yeah.

• 53:36Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it works.

• 53:37Speaker 05

  It did work. Okay, because I always felt it was like a bit scammy. Like, okay, it's gonna pop 51% of the kernels or something.

• 53:45Jay Novella?

  No, I mean, it's not. It was fine and it didn't taste horrible, but it was by you could just make homemade popcorn. That blows away any of those pre-bagged.

• 53:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, the air, once the air blowers, I guess, became the way to go that that was the end of the Jiffy Pop era.

• 53:59Jay Novella?

  And another way to do it, too, which is if you take coconut oil and you do it in a pot on the stove, it has the best frickin' flavor. Anyway, so a listener named William Steele wrote in, said, hi, Jay, this episode's noisy. Sounds a lot like when I would go looking for shells under the waves at the beach. I I'll guess this is an underwater recording of shells churning under the waves. I thought that was a really awesome guess. Um, I could even hear what he was saying about that. That's not correct, but thank you for sending that in. Marsh Wildman took a guess. He said, hi, Jay, listening to the January 4th, who's that noisy? The bulk of it sounds like a we fax, which is a. Weather Facts Radio Transmission, but there are some other unfamiliar artifacts mixed in.

• 54:42Jay Novella?

  Not sure what those may be, but I still think that this is a digital radio transmission of some sort. That is incorrect. Thank you for that guess. Michael Stoicecu. Uh, this guy's name is S.T.O.I.C.E.S.C.U. Good luck, anybody pronouncing that guy's last name. Stoice? Stoicescu? I don't know.

• 55:03Speaker 05

  Stochescu.

• 55:04Jay Novella?

  Stochescu. Michael Stochescu. Okay, so this, Michael guesses ice skating on the smooth, thin, clear ice of a lake. I hear some of that in there as well, but that is not correct. Kathy Taylor guessed, is it a rain stick? It is not a rain stick, but there is a rain stick sound in there.

• 55:22Speaker 05

  Tinkling of a rain stick.

• 55:23Jay Novella?

  And Matthew Morrison guessed, he says, hey Jay, my daughter Nev thinks that it sounds like a pot of water that's boiling. I'm going to say it sounds like a big 50 cup coffee maker percolating. Not bad guesses, guys. Unfortunately, there was no winner. Nobody guessed it.

• 55:40Speaker 05

  No.

• 55:41Jay Novella?

  Yeah. So let's go back and listen to it real quick after I tell you what it is, but

• 55:46Speaker 05

  All right.

• 55:47Jay Novella?

  This is a, this is a cool one, guys. This is the sound that wood makes when it's burning on the inside. So this is the sound of what's happening inside the wood, not the sound of fire. The sound of what's happening in, inside the wood. Now, what is actually happening is the heat is making the wood go from a solid to a gas. And that gas is expanding the wood, right? That's why you hear like those pops and crackling noises.

• 56:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:15Jay Novella?

  The wood is fracturing. It's funny because, you know, we think, you know, that's, that's the fire, but that is not the sound of the fire. That is the sound of the wood actually gassing and cracking open.

• 56:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, the crackling, I think is, I always thought, yeah, that was like gas being released.

• 56:31Jay Novella?

  I guess all of it is the sound of fire, but it isn't like the actual flames itself. So here it is again.

• 56:49Jay Novella?

  I think that's so cool.

• 56:50Speaker 05

  Fireproof microphone? They shoved it in there?

• 56:53Jay Novella?

  They did. They had a microphone inside the wood. It was inserted into it.

• 56:57Speaker 05

  Crazy.

• 56:58Jay Novella?

  I have a new noisy for you guys this week that was sent in by a listener named Michael Habitshit. H A B I C H T.

• 57:07Jay Novella?

  Habitshit. Michael, who is it? His last name is a sneeze. Habitshit.

• 57:13Jay Novella?

  So anyway, Michael, I'm sorry. Everyone that listens to this show just has to, you know, everyone has to uniformly understand that you give me some crazy ass foreign last name when I can't pronounce it. Sorry.

• 57:25Speaker 05

  Everyone change your name to Smith.

• 57:28Jay Novella?

  Alright guys, and here's the noisy.

• 57:35Jay Novella?

  Here it is again.

• 57:36Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh.

• 57:42Jay Novella?

  Lots of weird things going on in there. That's not an easy one. I'll tell you that much. Not an easy noisy at all, but if you think you know what it is, or if you heard something cool, you can email me at [email protected]. Steve, the number one way that people who listen to this show can help support the show is by becoming a patron of The Skeptics Guide. You can go to patreon.com/skepticsguide. We have different levels to our patronage, all of which will gain access to premium content. At the $8 level, you'll get the ad-free show, and there are other things in there that are offered to people at that level and higher, so please take a look.

• 58:24Jay Novella?

  It really does help us produce the show. It helps us keep the doors open. And, you know, in a world where things seem like they're going off the cliff, not speaking about specifics, but if you feel like rational thinking is important, Steve, what should people do?

• 58:40Speaker 02

  They should become patrons.

• 58:42Jay Novella?

  You are so energetic, Steve. It blows my mind. So there's a few more things, guys. You could join our mailing list. Every week, we send out an email to our listeners telling them about all the things that the SGU did the previous week. You can go to the skepticsguy.org. There's a link on there to join our mailing list. You could also give our show a rating. Ratings actually are very valuable because it helps new people find our program. Please do that. If you have a minute, you could go to, you know, Apple, I think, still has ratings. There are rating lists out there. Just please pick one and give us a rating. We have a wonderful conference coming up for 2025. This is called Not a Con. It's Not a Con 2025, and we are doing something really awesome

• 59:26Jay Novella?

  at this conference. We are going to have a Beatles sing-along on Saturday night. Last time we did Not a Con, we had an 80's sing-along, and it was widely loved by almost, if not every single person in the hotel, not even at the conference, because everybody heard that, yeah. So, please think about joining us this year. We have an awesome program for you. We have a bunch of new bits that were not presented last time. They are new for the 2025 conference. The conference starts on the 15th. There will be a VIP on the 15th. We also have the board game happening on the 15th. I believe that those are both sold out, but there are still a lot of people that will be coming to the hotel that night

• 1:00:07Jay Novella?

  to hang out and socialize. And let me remind you that this conference is about socializing. There will be a lot of opportunity to socialize with other people that are at the conference. We'll also be doing Boomer vs. Zoomer, which is our game show. George Robb, Andrea Jones-Roy, and Brian Wecht will all be joining the SGU crew for the entire conference. And we think that this one is going to be so much fun. So please do come, guys. It's going to be a ton of fun. You could go to notaconcon.com. Evan, I'm going to repeat that for you, just to make sure you got it. Thank you. That's notaconcon.com, right? Concon.com. You could also go to the skepticsguy.org and find a link on there as well.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Quince.

• 1:00:55Bob Novella?

  With a new year comes a chance to reimagine ourselves for the better and importantly, our closets. This year, I'm resolving to refresh my look with quality pieces and stay on budget, and I can, thanks to Quince.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, for the holidays this year, I got my wife the Quince ribbed cashmere sweater, and she absolutely loved it. She gave me their down puffer hoodie jacket. It fits me perfectly, and we have this Arctic freeze thing happening in New England here, and it's absolutely the warmest coat I've ever had.

• 1:01:25Bob Novella?

  Upgrade your closet this year without the upgraded price tag. Go to quince.com/sgu for 365 day returns, plus free shipping on your order. That's Q U I N C E dot com slash S G U to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/sgu.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. All right, guys, we're going to do a couple of emails. First one comes from Joshua Banta from Tyler, Texas, and he writes, "I have a basic question. If we already know bird flu is so dangerous and that it only takes one mutation to begin to spread person to person, then what are we waiting for? Why not sequence the dominant strains in livestock and spin up mRNA vaccines, or old fashioned egg-based vaccines, and start a mass vaccination program? Sure, the vaccine may not be an exact match for the strains. That does leap to humans, but it should be close. Heck, the COVID vaccines we receive are never an exact match for the strains that are circulating. They're always mutating and therefore are always different, even ever so slightly from the vaccine targets at a point in time.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  So why not head off this bird flu threat and nip it in the bud with vaccines? Thanks for all the great work. Best wishes for 2025." That's a fair question, Joshua. Do you guys have any immediate thoughts about that?

• 1:02:37Bob Novella?

  Money, money.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a bit, one thing is cost. It would cost a lot of money to, to roll out a vaccine, to first of all, develop an H5N1 vaccine even from, to mass produce it, which we're not doing right now. There isn't one, you know, rolled out. We do have like a national stockpile of vaccines, not enough to go around. That would be just for people at high risk of exposure, right?

• 1:03:03Bob Novella?

  Hospital workers.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  Farm workers, whatever, wherever the spillovers are happening, whoever's going to be at high risk of contracting it, that's what the vaccines are for. But even now, what they're doing is they're using other methods, right? So it's not just should we vaccinate or not. It's like, what are the methods we have of limiting exposure, limiting infections? And of all the options, what are the best ones? So a mass vaccination program right now isn't cost effective, it's not really necessary. So the other thing is, why do it prematurely? When that would, that means it's not, not that it's not an exact match, it'd be a worse match. And, right? So the effectiveness is pretty much related to how close the match

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  is. So, and even with, you know, the regular annual flu vaccine, if we're a little bit off, you know, on predicting the strain, the effectiveness could be 20, 30%, you know?

• 1:03:59Bob Novella?

  That's what I suspected.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Right. Imagine if we roll out this mass vaccination program and it's 5% effective or whatever, that's, you know, it's just not, it's not effective, it's not an effective method. There is a related question of why aren't we vaccinating birds, you know, chickens, turkeys, or even cows, to protect them? Now, some countries do vaccinate.

• 1:04:21Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I thought they did.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  They do vaccinate. We are not doing it. Basically, you have some countries only vaccinate, some countries, like Japan, not very effective, actually. Some countries like the US only use other methods, what they call the, I think it's called the stomp method, where you basically kill every animal that's exposed. You just do a mass culling, and then you do, then you put them on lockdown, like try to limit a spread. So that's the method that we use. And then there's other countries, like European countries, that do both. They do some vaccination and they do some mass cullings and other methods of limiting exposure. You know, so whether or not we should be adding some vaccinations to the mix is

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  a difficult question. And again, expense is a huge factor. It has to be worth it. You know, it's just easier to kill everything that gets infected, then that's what they're going to do. But that does raise ethical questions about, you know, about the culling. And if we get a big outbreak in cattle, that's, it becomes less feasible to just do mass cullings. So this is an evolving strategy, right? You know, vaccines are being used, they're going to probably be increasingly used in animals, as well as other methods of trying to limit the spread. When it, you know, when and if it spills over into humans, then again,

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  we'll be, we'll have the existing vaccines as sort of a first line of defense for high risk people. There'll be whatever other methods are necessary to try to limit exposure, limit the spread. And if it starts to get to like outbreak level, epidemic level, that's when we could make a vaccine to that strain, right? The question is, how quickly will we be able to do that? You know, it could take months, you know, a few months to, even though we have proven flu vaccines, you have to make it to the strain that's, that's out now. And that takes time.

• 1:06:21Speaker 05

  Oh, when the first case, when the first human does get it, I mean, is it going to be treated almost like someone with Ebola, in which they go and they isolate that person and try to?

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably.

• 1:06:32Speaker 05

  You know, take every, you know, go through all those precautions. You know, I've seen footage of that. It's, it's, it's quite an undertaking.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. One more email. This one comes from Joe Streckert. And he writes, "On a recent segment about Bigfoot, Evan divided people who perpetuate the existence of cryptids into two groups, true believers and people who profit off of the myth. But I'm hesitant to think in such stark binary terms. Here in Portland, Bigfoot is very much a mascot or symbol of the Pacific Northwest region, regional identity. I don't believe he's literally real, and I don't know anyone who does, but the forest ape shows up again and again in local art, on t-shirts, and does a Portland Trailblazers mascot." My more outdoorsy friends will describe less traveled trails as camping areas as Bigfoot country, even though they don't actually believe in Bigfoot at all. He's a symbol

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  of the wilderness, but not a literal inhabitant of it. What are your thoughts on cryptids as local mascots and regional symbols by people who don't believe they're real? Do you think that practice is wholly negative? Or is it okay for a guy in a Bigfoot costume to perform during halftime during Blazer games? Big fan of the show. You're far and away my favorite podcast. Well, thank you, Joe.

• 1:07:44Jay Novella?

  Awesome. Thanks.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's okay. What do you guys think about that? Is like a cultural icon, making a cryptid into a cultural icon, a regional icon? How do you feel about that? Is that okay? You think it contributes to belief in pseudoscience or is it benign?

• 1:08:02Speaker 05

  I think it contributes to belief in pseudoscience. I do. We've seen it in not just, you know, things like Bigfoot, you know, with Loch Ness Monster, obviously. There's whole industries entirely built around that and certainly plenty of people who definitely believe in that as well. Certainly look what UFOs and aliens have done to our culture and many, many other cultures around the planet and how far that's kind of gotten out of control. I don't know that you can necessarily game these things and know exactly the extent, but I don't think there's much in the way of a positive aspect to it. I think, I think it only hurts.

• 1:08:38Bob Novella?

  Well, one angle I could see is that if you make that image part of your brand, make it funny, you know, make fun of it, make it look silly. That, I think that could turn off people into actually believing it by making it seem like, we know this is ridiculous, you know, making that part of the brand might help, might help a certain amount.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  I kind of agree with Bob that I do think it could, if it's like, this is clearly a mythical creature, not a real creature, and nobody takes it seriously, I don't think it would necessarily contribute to people really believing in it. So, I don't know if we have a lot of examples out there, but maybe leprechauns.

• 1:09:22Speaker 05

  Leprechauns. That's what I thought as well. Yeah, maybe unicorn.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like Ireland sort of has leprechauns as some kind of unofficial mascot sort of thing, but.

• 1:09:32Jay Novella?

  Nobody believes in leprechauns, right? I was wrong about that, but.

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  There are not throngs of people.

• 1:09:38Jay Novella?

  Who, yeah, who are hunting for actual leprechaun. It's recognized as, or dragons, like, nobody thinks dragons really exist.

• 1:09:45Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 1:09:45Jay Novella?

  You know, but, but dragons are an icon, especially like Chinese culture. Or, as Bob said, unicorns. Nobody thinks unicorns exist. So if Bigfoot, if Bigfoot evolves into that kind of role where it's like unicorns and leprechauns, then that's fine. That actually might be a good thing.

• 1:10:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, it could be. Yeah, but unfortunately, we have forces working against in the other direction. Trying to, trying to perpetuate it. And frankly, you know, because there are people who are trying to profit off of this. Television shows, I mean, that's where I go to with that.

• 1:10:23Jay Novella?

  I agree. It's in the gray zone now, or maybe it's transitional. It's also like Loch Ness, the Nessie in Scotland, right? I mean, we were there and I think the locals, they think it's a joke. But it's like, it's a joke, but it brings in the tourist dollars. So, eh, play along, wink, wink, nod, nod. Yeah, let's go see Nessie. You know, come on, it's like, nobody really thinks it's real. I remember our tour guide was so happy when he said, we have no interest in seeing Loch Ness. We want to see the pretty one. She was like, oh, thank goodness, every, every show.

• 1:10:52Speaker 05

  Everyone wants to go.

• 1:10:53Jay Novella?

  To Loch Ness.

• 1:10:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:10:55Jay Novella?

  See Nessie, right? And it's like, yeah, if you live in Roswell, you're gonna have a UFO themed whatever diner, because that's, you're in Roswell. You know, I don't know, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if most people who live in Roswell think that there was actually a crashed saucer there. So there's a whole spectrum, you know, from, you know, I think you can be a cultural icon without people really believing in it. You can do both. People can do the sort of winking, oh, yeah, you know, we're Bigfoot country out here.

• 1:11:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Jay Novella?

  Just try to goose tourism or whatever, or just because it's a fun mascot.

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  I agree. But we don't need the sheriff's office over, offering thousand, you know, saying thousand dollar fines for injuring Bigfoot. I don't think that helps.

• 1:11:35Jay Novella?

  Well, again, I think that, you know, you said that that rule is there so people won't shoot fellow hunters who have.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  To be burly, you know.

• 1:11:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah, bearded woodsman. They don't get, they don't.

• 1:11:48Jay Novella?

  I don't know. You think so? I mean, like, there's a big difference between a burly person and a, you know, a giant hair-covered creature.

• 1:11:56Speaker 05

  Well, people with guns and they're hunting.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're hunting in the woods, you see a shadowy shape rustling the bushes. Absolutely, people will shoot hunters thinking that they're, it's Bigfoot.

• 1:12:07Speaker 05

  I would wear orange if I go out anywhere like that.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  That's why you have to wear hunter orange. Yeah. All right. Thank you for those emails. Guys, it's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Except this week I have a theme and I have four items. Haven't done that in a while.

• 1:12:44Speaker 05

  Ooh, yeah, I don't think we had a, in 2024, I don't think we had a four item.

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  But these are quick. That's why I did four. So the theme is the Consumer Electronics Show 2025.

• 1:12:57Speaker 05

  That's what I was trying to think of when I was doing my segment. Yeah, the Consumer Electronics Show. Yep.

• 1:13:01Bob Novella?

  Is that, is that going on now?

• 1:13:03Speaker 05

  It is. Yeah.

• 1:13:04Bob Novella?

  Crap, missed it.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  So these are four products that were showed at CBS 2025. Although one of them wasn't.

• 1:13:13Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  See if you can tell which one is the fake. You guys ready?

• 1:13:19Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  All right, item number one. The Eco Flow is a solar-powered hat capable of charging two devices at once.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  All right, number two, the Spicer is an automatic spice dispenser that holds up to six spices in proprietary sealed, unrefillable capsules.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Item number three, a Japanese manufacturer introduced an electric spoon that it claims will make food taste more salty and savory.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  And item number four, Swipit is about the size and shape of a toaster into which you place a smartphone to swap out its internal battery for a fresh one.

• 1:13:58Bob Novella?

  That makes no sense. The phone one. So Steve, is this, is this a specific type of phone that has hot swappable batteries? Or is it meant like for an iPhone or, or Pixel or some-

• 1:14:12Speaker 05

  Sounds like Bob's going first, by the way.

• 1:14:13Bob Novella?

  Or mainstream phone?

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  Bob, why don't you go first?

• 1:14:17Bob Novella?

  Ah, fuck. Answer my question.

• 1:14:21Speaker 05

  Answer me.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  You get the information you have.

• 1:14:25Bob Novella?

  Oh yeah. So now, so when I ask questions, I get the information I have.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  For this one, just because the nature of this science fiction, no questions.

• 1:14:34Speaker 05

  So who's going first?

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Bob.

• 1:14:35Bob Novella?

  Yes, it's me. Um, all right. Well, this, the thing is, this is perfect for this because there's so many crazy things out there that they would absolutely try to sell. Uh, like for example, the solar powered hat. Now, there's no way that you're going to be doing any significant charging of your, of your phone with a hat. I mean, you probably, you know, have to do hours just to get a few percentage points, something like that.

• 1:15:04Bob Novella?

  Solar powered hat. But if you're going to, they do, they do make solar powered consoles, solar powered devices, devices that you could hook your phone to, to charge it. And in the apocalypse, it would be awesome. And if you're walking around on the beach all day, yeah, you might as well trickle charge if you can. So that's, yeah, it's kind of okay. Kind of makes sense that somebody would do that. The spice dispenser, uh, makes a, that seems like a great item. I mean, you can't, it's, it's, from reading right, it's meant that you can't mess with it in terms of like replacing a spice with another spice. But um, but yeah, I mean, think of all the spices you have in your cabinet.

• 1:15:47Bob Novella?

  You probably use three or four 90% of the time. So that'd be great, just for the ones that you would use all the time. So that sounds pretty good to me. From reading this, right? Let me see, sometimes I miss a word that just like critical. The spicer. All right. Let's see. The electric spoon to make food taste more salty and savory. That's ridiculous.

• 1:16:13Bob Novella?

  But let me think about it, though. I mean, could you?

• 1:16:15Jay Novella?

  Could you?

• 1:16:16Bob Novella?

  I mean, so what, you get a little shock? Could that, is that their angle that they're doing a little shock? Which of course would be horrible.

• 1:16:24Speaker 05

  Ah, little shock of horrors.

• 1:16:26Bob Novella?

  So what other angle could they use besides just purely like, you know, putting a nine volt to your tongue? I don't know. Could there be some subtle effect that could actually impact taste? Remember those pills that you would eat that would basically change, literally just change flavors for various foods for periods of time?

• 1:16:46Speaker 02

  Block your bitter receptors, right?

• 1:16:47Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it doesn't change flavor. It just, yeah, it stops you from tasting bitterness.

• 1:16:52Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but I mean.

• 1:16:53Jay Novella?

  It's from a plant.

• 1:16:54Bob Novella?

  Yeah, the effect, though, was that things tasted differently.

• 1:16:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, they made it in a plant, Jay.

• 1:16:58Bob Novella?

  That doesn't sound likely at all, but I'm trying to think of what could be a workaround. All right, so let's go with this last one. The toaster and the stupid phone. That's ridiculous. But you know, I think Steve, I don't think Steve, I think he's counting on this one. Cause it just sounds utterly ridiculous. Unless it was, no, that's just so stu-, it's too stupid to be fake. Let's put it that way. So I'm gonna go with, um, I'll go with the spoon.

• 1:17:27Jay Novella?

  Okay, Jay. Uh, the Echo Flow, the solar powered hat. They say here it's capable of charging two devices at once. I mean, I see, I think that one is real because there's no mention of how long it would take to charge those devices. You know, I suppose if you're walking out on a sunny day all day, you could, you could charge two devices. Doesn't mean charge the full either. Yeah, I'd say sure, someone came up with that. The spicer, the spicer is an automatic spice dispenser that holds up to six spices and it's proprietarily sealed.

• 1:18:00Jay Novella?

  Automatic spice. So what do you hold this over your plate and press a button and it it puts out what it thinks it needs to put out. I guess, Steve. Yeah, huh?

• 1:18:14Speaker 05

  Right, Steve, huh?

• 1:18:17Jay Novella?

  All right. I mean, sure. That doesn't. That's not hard. You know, I don't know. I shouldn't say it's not hard. I mean, you the mechanism doesn't seem that hard. If it if there's AI involved in it, which I'm thinking it is.

• 1:18:31Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:18:31Jay Novella?

  Everything. Evan, come on. Your shoelaces are going to have AI at some point.

• 1:18:36Speaker 05

  Even the aglets.

• 1:18:37Jay Novella?

  The third one, a Japanese manufacturer introduced an electric spoon. They claim that it will make food taste more salty and savory. That sounds very bizarre. And also, an electric spoon doesn't sound that comfortable, if you know what I mean. Like, I don't want electricity happening in my mouth. So that one, that one, okay, I'll put that one on a on a sub list here as maybe. Let me go to the last one, the Swippet. About the size and shape of a toaster into which you place a smartphone to swap out its internal battery for a fresh one. I mean, unless they're talking about a proprietary phone that lets you swap out the internal battery, there is absolutely no way that that's happening to an iPhone.

• 1:19:20Jay Novella?

  I can't imagine that that happening to, you know, a Google phone either. Like, there is no swapping of the internal battery for a fresh one. So I don't know. What the hell this is about? Yeah, I don't think that one is it. I think that one is is the fiction because you can't swap out universally shop swap out batteries in cell phones. I mean, there is. There's a lot more to this than we're than we're hearing. And if anything, I would think that there's there's another mechanism involved that we don't know about.

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  Okay, and Evan?

• 1:19:49Speaker 05

  Well, Jay, I'm inclined a bit to agree with you on the Swippet.

• 1:19:55Speaker 05

  You're right. It's not like take whatever phone and throw it in there and we'll swap the battery out, obviously. The majority of the phones we have now can't do that, you know, even with even a person can't do it, let alone a machine. So therefore, the Swippet would be its own phone. Have built, you know, a Swippet phone that goes in your Swippet toaster to swap your Swippet battery. All proprietary, right? All its own system. It's a closed system, right? You're not going to put your Apple in there or your iPhone, whatever. That leads me to believe if it is its own system, does not have, can't handle the other devices and other manufacturers and stuff, then it could be possible, which is

• 1:20:39Speaker 05

  why I think it is possible that that is true. Also Swipit, notice S W I P P I T T, T T. Okay. Now I'm going to go back to the spicer, spelt S P I C E R R. I think Steve made this up. I think he took the Swipit idea, you know, because and threw the extra R on there for spicer. I think that's a bit of a tell. Holds up to six spices in proprietary sealed unfillable capsule. I just don't think that thing exists. I have a feeling Steve made this one up entirely. Eco Flow solar power hat makes sense to me. And the Japanese spoon one makes sense to me because it says it claims it will make food taste more salty and savory. And I believe it's not a spoon that you eat with. I think it's a cooking

• 1:21:24Speaker 05

  spoon, right? So it infuses somehow into the food, but and maybe even not. It could just be a placebo effect. You think that it's happening, therefore you think it's more salty than it actually is because it's a claim. It's not really even been proven. I have a feeling the spicer is the fiction.

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  All right. So you guys are all spread out. Kara, you'll notice is not with us. She, you know, is too busy dealing with the, her.

• 1:21:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, she had more.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  Her city being on fire. Yeah. So she had to bail. But let's, let's go to number one, I guess, since you all, you guys all agree on this one. The Eco Flow is a solar powered hat capable of charging two devices at once. You all think this one is science, and this one is ridiculously science.

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, mine's ridiculous.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Well, the hat, first of all, you have to see the hat, right? I mean,

• 1:22:09Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  It looks ridiculous. It's got a huge rim and that's where the solar panels are. They're kind of like sewn into.

• 1:22:17Speaker 05

  Like a sombrero?

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  Like a sombrero. Yeah.

• 1:22:20Bob Novella?

  And they must be very light panels as well.

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  They're not like, they're like woven into the fabric. You know what I mean? It's not like a panel stuck on the outside. It's more integrated into the fabric.

• 1:22:30Bob Novella?

  Well, that's something.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it has a USB A and USB C connector, connector under the brim. It produces a maximum of five volts and 2.4 amps. Uh, so that's basically nothing, you know, so we

• 1:22:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  It like maybe will

• 1:22:46Speaker 05

  Slow charge something.

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  Your phone, you know, but it's not going to like, not gonna

• 1:22:50Bob Novella?

  Apocalypse.

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  To recharge your phone.

• 1:22:52Jay Novella?

  It looks ridiculous.

• 1:22:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's as a fashion statement, you know, it's, it's right up there with chair pants.

• 1:23:00Jay Novella?

  You know, there are things, Steve, like, like, um, people who are out hiking, you know, they have solar panels that they like were put on their backpack.

• 1:23:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's different.

• 1:23:09Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, this has solar panels. I mean, it's kind of similar, you know, it's like, it's just a, a minor trickle flow to, to charge a phone if you don't have whatever. It's not, it's not a horrible thing, but I think it's been done much better with other

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:23:23Jay Novella?

  You know, higher quality, uh, product.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's no reason to put it on your hat. Um, all right. Let's, I guess we'll take these in order. The Spicer is an automatic spice dispenser that holds up to six spices and proprietary sealed, unrefillable capsules. Evan, you think this one is the fiction. Jay and Bob, you think this one is science. And this one is science. Sorry, Evan. Bob, you actually want this thing. Maybe I'll get it to you for your birthday or something.

• 1:23:50Bob Novella?

  Um, right. I mean, this, this makes sense that you use some spices much more than others. It'd be great to have them just right there. Click. I assume you just do a click, click, and you can get like, uh,

• 1:24:00Speaker 05

  Is it for the chef or the, or the eater?

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  Whatever. Either way, it's more for cooking. I mean, I think it's more for cooking. And it, it doesn't decide how much spice to put in. You tell it, like, I want one tablespoon of this. I want one, whatever.

• 1:24:12Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  You tell it how much to put in. You just, you press the buttons and you hit go and it drops all the spices pre-measured into your pot or whatever.

• 1:24:19Jay Novella?

  Now, I don't like this and I'll tell you why.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't like it either.

• 1:24:23Jay Novella?

  First of all, you know, you're limited to the spices you could load into. I'm looking it up on the website.

• 1:24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have to buy their spices.

• 1:24:31Jay Novella?

  That sucks. I don't like that.

• 1:24:33Speaker 05

  Well, that's, that's

• 1:24:33Jay Novella?

  That's crazy.

• 1:24:34Speaker 05

  There's the capsules, yeah.

• 1:24:35Bob Novella?

  If their spices suck, that'd be one thing, but what if they were decent? What if they were like, ah, fairly good quality spices?

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  But you're locked in. Like, you don't have a choice. You can't buy anything you want. It's not like, if you could refill the capsules, if they were not sealed, then that would be, that would be much better.

• 1:24:51Bob Novella?

  Sure.

• 1:24:51Jay Novella?

  Wait, so what happens?

• 1:24:52Bob Novella?

  When they run out.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  You gotta replace them.

• 1:24:54Speaker 05

  With a new cap?

• 1:24:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah, so there's, yeah, so there's a new capsule that you would get, but you can't get a different type of spice?

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  You could, you could swap them out, but then the whole point is that this is supposed to be more convenient. If you're swapping out capsules into this device, there's no way that it's more convenient than just dashing your spice into your pot. You know what I mean?

• 1:25:13Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's ridic- the whole premise is ridiculous. First of all, if you're cooking, if you cook on a regular and all that, like you, you, you have a drawer filled with spices.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  Dozens of spices.

• 1:25:24Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  That I use on a regular basis.

• 1:25:26Jay Novella?

  But I could, I could go through a short list right now off the top of why this is ridiculous. One, you know, spices don't last forever, right?

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:34Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 1:25:35Jay Novella?

  They do have a shelf life. Once you buy them and you open them, like you gotta be mindful of that. Like it's good to have the dates written on there. This, first off, I guarantee you that their spices are more expensive than what they cost in the store. I could almost guarantee it because it's all packaged and all that shit.

• 1:25:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, you have to buy the system.

• 1:25:52Jay Novella?

  You know, and then I have questions like, well, what if I use a lot of one spice? Can you just buy that one thing or do you have to buy a whole pack of them? Like, you know, it just gets, I don't know.

• 1:26:01Speaker 05

  It's three of your six chambers.

• 1:26:02Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it does sound annoying.

• 1:26:04Jay Novella?

  You know, then you'll have a whole freaking drawer full of, you know, of like some wacko spice that you don't use.

• 1:26:10Speaker 02

  It's, it's solving a non-problem and introducing a bunch of new ones.

• 1:26:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's Rube Goldberg-ish in a way.

• 1:26:19Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, just, we've got a spice little mini closet thing in my kitchen. How long does it take to just go in there and grab the, and grab the damn spice you want? True. That's true. It is not much of a problem that's being solved here.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  And for the salt and pepper, which are like the ones you use all the time, you have a dedicated, you know, salt shaker and pepper grinder right there, you know?

• 1:26:39Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  Anyway, let's go on. Number three. A Japanese manufacturer introduced an electric spoon that it claims will make food taste more salty and savory. Bob, you think this one is the fiction?

• 1:26:52Speaker 05

  Could be.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Jay and Evan think this one is science.

• 1:26:55Speaker 05

  Not anymore.

• 1:26:55Speaker 02

  And this one is?

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  Science, sorry about.

• 1:27:00Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  Really? Yep, the, the, the company is Kirin, K I R I N, Kirin, Kirin. That's a beer company.

• 1:27:09Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  And they made this electric spoon. It is for eating, Evan, not for cooking.

• 1:27:13Jay Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:27:14Speaker 02

  And it does give you electrical, electrical charge. It's an electrical current that's supposed to concentrate the sodium ions to amplify the salty and umami taste savory flavor.

• 1:27:25Bob Novella?

  That sounds suspect.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  And so you have to hold the spoon, you have to put your fingers on like the conducting plates to activate it.

• 1:27:33Jay Novella?

  To connect, make the connection.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  And then you have to hold it in your mouth for a few seconds to get the effect. It, the whole thing seems ridiculous.

• 1:27:39Jay Novella?

  And then it has to give you a 20 amp jolt to the tongue. And then a mechanism makes you chew your food. And you have to have a ground shoe, a shoe that is grounding so you don't like. So, I mean, look, let's say that this thing works really well.

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:56Jay Novella?

  Who gives a shit?

• 1:27:58Bob Novella?

  Like, Jay, Jay, salt, but salt, baby. People love salt and a lot of people have to avoid it because of.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:28:06Bob Novella?

  Because of a medical condition.

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  And you know what country has the worst salt overuse problem in the world?

• 1:28:11Bob Novella?

  Sure, it's the United States.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  Japan, Japan.

• 1:28:13Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:28:14Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 1:28:15Bob Novella?

  Well, there you go.

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, we eat more fat, they eat more salt. So they all have hypertension and they die of heart attacks and strokes from their hypertension.

• 1:28:20Jay Novella?

  I thought that we said on the show that salt doesn't give you hypertension.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  That's not true.

• 1:28:26Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  That is not true.

• 1:28:27Jay Novella?

  So we're back to not, we're back to limiting salt intake.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  I, I just did a TikTok on this today.

• 1:28:33Jay Novella?

  Well, hello.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  The evidence is pretty clear that if you have hypertension, there is a pretty linear relationship between your salt intake and your blood pressure. And lowering your salt intake will lower your blood pressure. The only question is in people who do not have hypertension, is it, so there is a, there is a controversy over what the recommendations should be for people who do not have high blood pressure at baseline. Um, should they still keep their salt low or are they fine, you know? And the American Heart Association says, keep your salt low anyway. And other people say, no, it's, it's, that's overkill. You don't need to do that. But if you have hypertension. Well, that's true. You get, a lot of people get iodine from their salt. Uh, but there's no question that if you have hypertension, salt's a problem.

• 1:29:18Jay Novella?

  Right.

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  And there's also no question that in Japan, they eat a lot of salt and they have a lot of hypertension, they have a lot of strokes. That's also not. Uh, not contested. So even though I think this is ridiculous, I understand why you would think of like, why a Japanese company would say, hey, how could we satisfy people's desire for salty food without having them put a lot of salt in it?

• 1:29:37Speaker 05

  Context matters.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right.

• 1:29:40Speaker 05

  But does it work?

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  You know, who knows?

• 1:29:45Speaker 05

  It's a claim. It's not a proof.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  Swipit is about the sizing shape of a toaster into which you place a smartphone to swap out its internal battery for a fresh one is the fiction.

• 1:29:56Speaker 05

  Did you make it up entirely?

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  Nope. The Swipit exists. It is a toaster sized device. You do put your phone in, but you are swapping out an external battery that goes into its proprietary phone case.

• 1:30:08Speaker 05

  Oh, case.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's a, it's an.

• 1:30:10Speaker 05

  You're not swapping out the internal battery.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  The internal battery. You're swapping out an external battery that goes in its case. So you have to get their proprietary case and their proprietary battery. It's an extra battery that gives you, it extends your.

• 1:30:23Speaker 05

  I should have thought of that.

• 1:30:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. You extend your, your battery life.

• 1:30:26Speaker 05

  Internal, yeah.

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  And you could, you could, you could swap it out by just putting it in this ridiculous toaster sized device.

• 1:30:32Speaker 05

  It's entirely proprietary, but I didn't think about an external.

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  The internal battery is just not, that's just not feasible.

• 1:30:37Speaker 05

  It's not gonna, it's not ever, yeah.

• 1:30:39Jay Novella?

  Well, they could design phones to do that, but they won't.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  I guess, but they won't. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's not happening.

• 1:30:44Speaker 05

  They used to.

• 1:30:44Speaker 02

  If you want the form factor and everything, whatever. So, oh yeah, but this is, this is an external battery. I, I, that's the, that's the detail that I changed. Um, and I did.

• 1:30:53Speaker 05

  That was fun.

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  It, it is meant for use like with iPhones or whatever, because you just have to put, you have to put their case on it, which apparently is not very attractive. Uh, but, um, I just said smartphone to make it ambiguous so that people might think, oh, they, you have to use their proprietary phone in order to make this work.

• 1:31:10Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. To make it a little bit more challenging. All right. That was good. You guys were all over the place. I like that.

• 1:31:15Speaker 05

  It was fun.

• 1:31:16Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:31:18Speaker 05

  Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game. Karl Popper.

• 1:31:29Speaker 05

  From the book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, on which apparently this is the premise of the book.

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  Yes, that is a seminal work, and that is basically the unfalsifiable.

• 1:31:38Speaker 05

  And shame on me for not having read this book. Why don't I know about this book? It was written in 1959. Boy, I should have, by now, I should have picked this one up. The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  It is, it is, again, a seminal work. It is the, you know, established this idea that falsifiability is a necessary feature of any truly scientific hypothesis or endeavor.

• 1:32:02Speaker 05

  Oh, so true.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  Yep. Carl Popper. Guys, remember what movie referenced Popper?

• 1:32:09Jay Novella?

  Oh, I vaguely remember that.

• 1:32:11Speaker 05

  It was a science fiction?

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  A popular science fiction movie that threw in Popper as...

• 1:32:14Bob Novella?

  Silence of the Lambs?

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:32:17Speaker 05

  2001.

• 1:32:18Speaker 02

  The Matrix. The cartoon Matrix. What was that called?

• 1:32:22Jay Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:23Speaker 02

  Revolutions or something?

• 1:32:25Jay Novella?

  Yeah, Revolutions.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  Major Revolutions?

• 1:32:27Bob Novella?

  Renaissance, one and two? The best, um, Matrix animated, or one of the not best?

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  No, the good one, that was like 10 or so little animated shorts.

• 1:32:37Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's what I mean. But which, which short was it?

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  It was the, it was the kid-

• 1:32:41Jay Novella?

  It's the Animatrix.

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  The Animatrix, that's what it was. The Animatrix. It was the kid who spontaneously, you know, like he flew, jumped out the window and spontaneously got his consciousness back into his body. That one.

• 1:32:54Speaker 05

  I'm skeptical.

• 1:32:55Bob Novella?

  Oh, wow, I don't remember that.

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. Shout out to Popper in that one. All right.

• 1:32:59Bob Novella?

  Ah, good.

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  Thank you, Evan.

• 1:33:01Speaker 05

  That was obscure. Thank you.

• 1:33:03Speaker 02

  So, thank you, guys, for joining me this week.

• 1:33:05Jay Novella?

  You guys, man.

• 1:33:06Speaker 05

  Doctor.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hopefully, everything will go well with the L.A. fires. We're keeping an eye on that. We'll probably give you a little update next week. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to [email protected]. And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/skepticsguide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

• 1:33:59Speaker 07

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